


At The Boundary Of Dusk

by VanToRia



Category: Elsword (Video Game)
Genre: Ara x Rose is valid, F/F, Gen, Highschool AU, mature subject matter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26184199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanToRia/pseuds/VanToRia
Summary: Oftentimes, we think that our first love is the one we can never forget. But for some, it can be the second, or the fourth. True love might be too much to expect out of the heart of teens, but sometimes it's precisely that youthful naivete that allows for true love to bloom and burn like the sun. That's what Ara draws inspiration from: an idealistic love with a goddess fallen from the sky just for a moment of her youth. She, who never believed in fairy tales, was accidentally the protagonist of one. And that tale is one she will never forget.
Kudos: 4





	1. The Time Before Her

**Author's Note:**

> I will never say this enough, but this fic handles some heavy topics right off the bat. That said, there is some fluff here and there. This fic was written over a week or so, which is incredibly rare from someone like me. I hope the effort I put into it makes it enjoyable for all of you who read it. It'd bring me great joy if you left a short comment.

The copper light of dusk filtered through the blades of the store curtains in Eun’s office. The white-haired psychologist sat elegantly in her office chair, her crimson gaze lit orange by the sunlight as she took some notes. She listened attentively to the monotone mumbling of the fourteen-year old girl in front of her. While sunlight made Eun’s eyes shine, it only made the shadow of her client's cleanly cut bangs grow even darker over her amber gaze. Her black backpack was carefully put to the right, and she sat straight, rigid as a plastic mannequin. The girl’s eyes went from line to line of a ringed notebook as she read the contents out loud.

When she was done, the girl clicked her tongue and shook her head, breaking free of her mold. With a heavy sigh, she carefully closed the book, as if it were a centuries-old manuscript and slid it in her backpack, taking good care so that her textbooks could hide it. She sat straight once more, looking in front of her, seeing the fiery shine in Eun’s eyes. She wondered if her own eyes shone the same.

“That was a very interesting entry, Ara,” Eun said with a smile, “Could you tell me what was on your mind when you wrote how-Hmm actually, why was Lyra’s trust with that double-agent completely crushed?”

Although her hair was cut short, Ara combed it back behind her ears, passing her hands through it as if to tie it up. But as she realized her long hair was no more, her gaze sank even more, her hands froze for a second before dropping down to her sides, transforming into lead.

“I, uh,” she began, looking back at her feet, “I was thinking about the time my mom seemed to be back when I was a kid. She invited me to go out to a beauty retreat, but we just went to the hair salon. And that’s why she just, uhm, well, that’s why I’ve had short hair for about two weeks now.”

“And the fact that lieutenant Reikal is not aware any of this is happening is because…?”

Ara bit her lip, her eyes were burning, but just like every day since  _ that evening _ , tears never came, “Well, Reikal is Aren in that chapter. So, because Aren was working that day, he just came home to see my new look, and Mom just explained her side of the story. As always. So, he told me I looked good like this. That’s why I’m planning to make Reikal betray Lyra soon.”

Eun’s smile dimmed as she furrowed her eyebrows, “So, you mean to say you didn’t want to cut your hair that short?”

“Mom just always...” Ara’s voice suffocated as her heart grew as numb and heavy as her arms had. The girl’s gaze sank once more to the polished black shoes of her uniform. They were square and long, like a man's. The clock that hung over the wall in between the two windows counted three more minutes of silence before Ara took a deep breath, finding her voice once more.

“I’ve come to understand that it’s better if my mom sees things go her way, even if I hate it. If it makes her feel better, then it’s one worry less on my mind.”

The white-haired woman glanced sadly at the clock, before turning back to Ara, “But it’s not making  _ you _ feel better, Ara. At least, it doesn’t seem like you enjoyed making your mother happy that day. Perhaps it removed one worry off your mind, but there’s clearly another one that took its place. Is that right?”

The amber-eyed girl nodded slowly, her amber gaze looking back up to Eun’s face. The girl pressed her lips and exhaled. It was all she could muster instead of the tears she felt welling up in her soul.

The woman’s gaze was as gentle as her smile, and she leaned a bit forward, “I know it’s very hard for you, but can you promise me that, for this week, you’ll find a time of day to spend where you do something that makes you feel better? It can be at school, if you feel like your family won’t give you that time."

“I, uhm,” Ara whispered, “I’ll try. I like reading. I could do that in school.”

Eun nodded, "Awesome. Tell me how it goes for you."

She turned to her left and saw that time was just about to run out. With a polite nod, she got up, dusting her pants off and hanging her backpack over her back. She bowed slightly at Eun and mumbled a ‘thank you’ before quietly dragging herself out of Eun’s office.

Although she had had the sun near her eyes for an hour, the last rays of dusk hurt her eyes so much, Ara looked back at her feet, briefly frowning at the sight of the boy’s uniform pants over her legs. She took a deep breath and turned to the right, walking on the edge of the sidewalk, making her way to the back of the building. A sudden breeze brought the leaf of a linden to her feet. It was still mostly green, except for an amber tip. Autumn was coming slowly this year. It was almost October, and autumn had yet to paint a canvas of glistening yellows, oranges and reds.

The sophomore girl of Lafayette Academy continued her way to the usual spot Aren parked his car, always underneath the maple trees that marked the boundary between a little woodland and the counselling centre.

She did not even have to knock at the window. Ara simply got close to the silver sedan, pulled the door to Ran’s right, and sat on the death seat. Her older brother barely glanced at her behind his shades, just to make sure she had indeed put on her seatbelt. The car purred as Aren turned the key and took off the parking brake. They drove out into the street, with only the muffled whispers of the road as their music. Ara searched on the front pocket of her backpack and took out her MP3 player with her headphones. The light turned red; Aren smoothly brought the car to a halt just as Ara shoved one earphone in her ear.

Her older brother by ten years finally broke the silence, “It took you longer today.”

Ara put the other headphone in her ear stoically, and nodded. Before the light turned yellow, Utsu’s second album began to play: guitars screeching ominously, suddenly joined by a savage rampage of drums. When the light turned green, the raven-haired girl deafened the silence with Kagamine Rin’s high-pitched growls. Out of all Utsu-P’s albums, Ara liked to listen to  _ Traumatic _ after she had met with Eun. 

She watched the streets of the quiet suburbs of Feita City, where trees left the building space to breathe, to the more tightly-knit suburbs of Velder City, where she lived. 

Aren parked in front of their home's garage, and got out of the car just a few seconds before his sister. The siblings did not have to walk more than five steps before reaching the front door. They did not have much of a front garden, but rather a backyard that was the envy of the block. Not only did they have a paved patio, with a table set for six, but they also enjoyed the luxury of a pool and a jacuzzi. No plants bloomed besides neatly kept grass, where not even the smallest of weeds were allowed to set root. Everything about the Haan residence, from inside and out, screamed of exemplary neatness and a flair of opulence.

The young raven-haired man searched his pockets for his keys, but Ara cut his time short, going straight for the doorbell. Aren took his hand out of his right pocket with a short sigh as he heard the chimes behind the door. It took less than two minutes for their mother, Rhidia, to open the door. She greeted her eldest with a kind nod, mouthing a 'thank you' before taking a step to the side to let her children in. 

Aren breezed in, but just as Ara was about to follow him, Rhidia blocked the entrance once more. She stared coldly at her daughter, more specifically at her ears. Ara turned off her MP3, took off her headphones, and looked blankly at the shell of a mother she had in front of her.

"You're here late," Rhidia's voice was calm, but Ara could feel its poisonous anger building up.

"There was traffic."

The brunette, middle-aged woman glared at her, pointing at her accusingly with her index finger, "Bull. Shit. Your brother texted me you got out five minutes later than usual. A liar is no child of mine."

Ara pressed her lips and simply exhaled, "I'm sorry, mom. Could you let me in? Like you said, I'm already late. I don't want to run out of time to do homework."

Rhidia grinned haughtily, "At least, you got back half of your head over your shoulders. At this rate, you’ll get it all back next year," she turned away from Ara and turned on the 6 PM news on the TV. "Show me today's test at dinner. And don't forget to take off your uniform."

Ara weakly nodded, entering her home with mice steps. She left her shoes neatly aligned next to her brother’s and put on her black slippers. Then, she passed behind the sofa and sat down on the dining table to do her homework. Meanwhile, her mother finished fixing their lunch and dinner for the following day. Those were the new rules of the house. No privacy for her. Rhidia glanced at her with a frown.

“Uniform.”

The girl looked down at herself and nodded, excusing herself to her bedroom. The walls were painted a peaceful green, bringing to life her room’s white curtain. A piano slept in front of her bed, a library filled with mostly textbooks was the closest thing to the door. Ara could have closed it, but she dared not to defy her mother’s rules like that. She walked in, unbuttoning her short-sleeved shirt first. She threw the cloth over her bed and walked to the opposite corner from where her piano was. Ara opened her wardrobe and got out one of Aren’s hand-me-downs, a loose grey shirt with ‘Metallica’ written on it in a washed-out, black print.

It was long enough to cover a quarter of her thighs. Ara unbuttoned her pants and let them drop to her feet before putting on her old, black basketball shorts, which covered the rest of her thighs. Then, she looked at the clothes she had left. She could put her shirt on once more the day after tomorrow. She just had to find a clothespin to hang it on until then. On the other hand, she had already passed a week with those horrible grey pants. They had to go to the laundry basket.

After putting her uniform where it belonged, Ara walked back to the dining room and opened her school’s planner. She had only one essay due tomorrow morning. Her math homework was due during class after lunch, so she would have more than enough time to finish it the following morning, and she could always skip lunch if it came down to that. Ara took out her MP3 once more, but her mother did not let a minute pass by with that on the table before voicing her disapproval.

“No distractions, Ara.”

“It’s just an essay. It’s easy.”

“Then, why haven’t any of your essays gotten you more than A-? If it were so easy, you’d bring home A+."

"I've had A+ in three essays."

"Sure. Three  _ practice  _ essays. Those are easy on purpose."

"The average was B-."

"So? Most kids waste their time on useless things instead of studying. You’re better than that. Now, stop talking back, focus, and get your essay done."

The girl put back the so-called distraction in her backpack and got down to business while her mother rhythmically cut carrots.

“You know, this is why you’re not getting any better, Ara. You keep getting distracted by things that don’t have any value. You hear songs not only sung by robots, but in a language you’ll never understand. How does that add anything of value to your life, huh?”

Ara’s mouth twitched briefly between a smirk and a scowl, but soon found its undisturbed calm, “Well, it’s not like my life has any value anyhow.”

“If you’ve realized that, then you should change that about yourself, don’t you think so?”

“Change it how, exactly?”

Her eyes focused on each trait her hand did as it danced to write her essay in cursive. She just had to focus on the idea and slow down to make her handwriting beautiful. But she could not deafen herself to the scolding coming from the kitchen.

“Look at your brother. He also had that weird hobby with Japanese comics, but he grew out of it before he was your age. Maybe that’s why you’re taking so much time getting better up there. You were doing great before getting influenced by those skanks. And now you’re making me pay some woman to get your head straight. To think you’d fall so low as to give up on improving yourself.”

Water began to boil, rumbling softly in its pot as Ara’s mother slid the carrots in it. Ara’s stomach was tying up, her face was growing red, but she had to keep writing. It was all that mattered. If she finished, her mother would leave her alone. People needed to be in pairs to fight. She did not have to take the bait. No, it was more than that; she _should_ _not_ take the bait. But, just like countless times before, her rage reached its peak point.

“You think it’s still funny to berate me and my only true friends like that?!” she hissed.

“That’s no way to talk to your own mother, young lady!” her mother’s voice replied in kind. Unlike Ara’s voice, Rhidia’s voice commanded absolute fear in those who heard her anger. A chill ran down the girl’s spine. She cowered back to her essay, but her mother’s wrath knew no mercy once unleashed, “I have taught you better than to disrespect your elders. Especially your own family. Go yell to your so-called friends. They deserve it much more than the mother who loves you. Are we clear?!”

Ara remained silent, her beautiful cursive slowly disrupted by the fear of everything her mother had inspired in her.

“I asked you a question. Answer!”

“Yes,” the girl muttered.

“ _ Yes? _ ”

Ara dropped her pen, prey to the spasm of terror, “Uh, I, uhm, I mean, Yes, mother.”

The girl picked up her pen again, taking a deep breath to stop herself from falling into a complete panic. The relative quietness that followed helped her convince herself that Rhidia would simply focus on her cooking and leave her alone. There were days like that, after all. There were good days like that, from time to time, where she did not have to fear getting verbally humiliated or hit.

But today, sadly, was not one of those days.

“I think I pampered you too much, that’s why you’re still so immature. Listen, Ara. You have half of your reason back, so I’ll tell it like it is: Ishmael gave us all life, but we don’t have the right to decide when it ends,” her mother’s voice was calm once more.

A small foam began to form from the water in the pan, making the low rumble of the bubbles quieter. Ara put down her pencil on the table, letting it slide to the middle of her notebook and stayed frozen right then and there. If nothing was going to stop her mother from continuing to dig into her wounds, there was no reason why she could not at least whimper one last time that it hurt.

“Ishmael doesn’t exist, so...” Ara whispered, immediately regretting her brief indifference at what was about to come now.

“Excuse me?!”

“Nothing, mom.”

Rhidia turned the stove off and sat directly in front of her daughter, her copper gaze shining like a hawk’s “You mumbled something. Say it clearly.”

“It's nothing.”

Ara’s mother slammed her fist on the table. Ara flinched.

“A girl like you has no right to mumble in this household anymore. If you want to go and regain that right, take yourself to an asylum first.”

Ara leaned back, glancing left and right before inevitably being sucked in by the explosion of anger in her mother’s eyes, “I was, uhm, I just said that Ishmael exists, so…”

“So, what?”

“So, you’re right. I need to grow up, and ask Her for strength.”

Rhidia furrowed her eyebrows at her daughter, but did not say another word. Ara picked up her pencil and continued her essay, thinking less on the words and more on what her mother had just told her. The words flowed from her pencil, but the ideas barely stayed on her mind. It took her thirty minutes to be done, but echoes of what her mother had said, on top of the many worse things she had spat to her face, returned to her mind. She stared at her finished essay, trying to re-read herself, but words were dancing over her eyes, barely hovering over her mind.

‘Focus, focus, focus. It has to be perfect this time around. Punctuation. Spelling. Focus. If you make it perfect, mom will keep quiet,’ she urged herself. But there was no such luck. 

The words danced, escaping from her mind. She surprised herself reading the same sentence over and over again, jumping to the middle of another one two lines before, then looking down at the last sentence of her conclusion. Nothing made sense, but it was beautifully written. Had she written gibberish? No. The words made sense, but her eyes just could not focus on the neat, straight lines of her own handwriting. Where were the mistakes? She was bound to have some. 

The amber-eyed girl put her index underneath the first letter in her essay, slowly sliding it from left to right. It was a little better; she could now follow her ideas.

The first two sentences were flawless, she thought to herself, swiping them for a second time. She heard her mother chuckle.

“Honestly, Ara. Are you fourteen or five?”

“Fourteen,” she said, obeying her mother’s implicit orders. She cuffed her left hand underneath the table with her right hand. Where was she? Second sentence, right. Second sentence after the title. Her eyes travelled along the rest of her first paragraph, but when the time came to spot her mistakes, her eyes were sewn shut.

Ara’s hands began to shake; she felt her eyes sting, much more than ever before. The girl told herself to calm down, taking deep breaths. But the more she breathed, the more her heart raced, the more she wanted to scream. Yet, if she did so, her mother would think she was overreacting again. And that was the worst thing her mother could think about her.

She had to calm down, sweep her sentences from left to right, just like she did when she read Lyra’s stories to Eun. Something warm was dwelling in her eyes, making her blink more and more.

“Oh, come on. You can't take a joke anymore, or what?” Rhidia hissed.

The bubbles rumbled louder, steam built up into a pillar. Ara was out of breath, as if she had sprinted for two miles. She gasped for air, the knot in her stomach grew painful and her vision blurred behind tears. She barely saw her mother coming, lifted her chin up, and slapped her. The burning hit cut her breath away, pushing back all her tears behind her tired, dull gaze. The knot in her stomach was still there, but the numbing sensation that travelled across her cheek was ice to her mind.

She came back to her usual calm, but she could not bear to look her mother in the eye. Rhidia sighed and walked back to the kitchen.

“Enough of this, Ara. Your brother is working hard, unlike you, so he needs you to be calm. If you have the time to take offence at a joke, you should use that time to study harder instead. You’re in charge of dinner today, got it?”

Ara nodded, got her math test out and left it where she had sat. Then, she got up robotically, heading to the kitchen. The raven-haired girl opened up the drawers, getting out two dishes, a pair of knives, and a pair of forks. Then, she took out the plastic containers with the rice and beef curry that was left for dinner, and a wooden spoon from the counter. When she began to serve the food only on the two dishes, it gathered the attention of her mother.

"Two dishes?! Who's not eating tonight?!"

"Me," her daughter monotonously replied, "I'm very tired."

Rhidia raised an eyebrow, "Oh, are you now?  _ Really _ . I think it’s that you don’t want me to see your test. That’s it, isn’t it?"

“No. I’m just tired. Today was a long day,” Ara’s voice lowered to a monotone mumble as she pointed at the table, “My test is there.”

Her mother walked back to the stove to stir the following day’s potage, and sighed, “Fine. Bring your pillow and a cover to the sofa.”

Ara pressed her lips, realizing her wish to be as far away from her mother as possible was not going to happen, "How long?"

"How long  _ what _ ?"

"How long will I have to sleep there when I want to go to sleep earlier?"

Her mother shrugged, "As long as it takes me to trust you again."

Ara looked to the side and slowly walked back to her room, taking her oldest plushie-a big fluffy fox-a pillow, and her most comfortable blanket with her. 

She was too tall to be comfortable on the leather loveseat, but it was not too bad when she curled into a fetal position. She hugged her plushie and closed her eyes. Sleep came like a guillotine.

Aren had heard the commotion even with his earphones on. When Rhidia was angered, there really was nothing that could silence her howls. 

"Aren! Dinner's ready!" His mother hollered.

The young man took a last glance at the apartments he had been looking at through social media before closing his laptop. He calmly walked to the dining room and sat down without a word. While he also said Grace before the meal, his mind was far from Ishmael and the meal itself.

Aren watched over his sister as he ate in silence. His mother ate while looking over the math test Ara had left on the table. She frowned at the basic mistakes her daughter was making on geometry and probability. Last time, it had been a mediocre B+. Now, it was an unacceptable B. 

Rhidia slid the paper closer to her son, "Did you have the time to review the concepts for this test with her?"

The young man glanced at the piece of paper and nodded, "She did her best. Cut her some slack, mother."

The woman shook her head, "I can't do that. She's going to waste her genius away like my brothers if I don't push her to-!"

"To her death. That's where you've been pushing her."

"No, Aren. She's never faced any real hardship, so that's what pushed her over the edge. I've read about it. It doesn’t help that she’s in her rebellious phase. I think that made her more volatile."

Aren choked on the sip of water he had in his mouth. He coughed, sickened by what he had just heard. And this time, he would not keep quiet about it.

"Holy El Lady, mother. Six months after we both saw her try to-” he coughed, took another sip of water to assuage the soreness the first gulp had left behind. He frowned at Rhidia, “After we saw her like that, how could you still say something so heartless?”

His mother looked down at him, putting a hand over his shoulder, “I know it’s hard to see it that way, sweetie, but anyone can experience trauma over a situation that they don’t know how to handle. In your sister’s case, it was just realizing she has to live a life far away from those tramps she called friends if she wants to succeed. Edward is a  _ far  _ better friend for her, and they could even marry when they’re older. The Grenores have always been good to us.”

The young man’s golden gaze widened. He dropped his fork from his hand, making it chime over the porcelain dish. He looked away from his mother, shaking his head. He pushed his chair further away to escape from Rhidia’s touch. Aren took a deep breath, picking back his fork to fish for another piece of beef, but even if the meat was as flavourful as tender as every other bite he had taken, he felt the unpleasant sting of rotten food as he chewed.

The amber-eyed man could only manage to eat two spoonfuls of spoiled rice before pushing his dish away from him. He glanced at his mother coldly, “Who are you, our loving mother or Ara’s tormentor?”

Rhidia was taken aback by Aren's words, and it took her too long to find an answer. When she finally opened her mouth, the young man got up without a word and walked up closer to Ara. She was sleeping soundly already.

He wondered if it was better if she slept more. Right now, she looked truly at peace, unlike her eerie calm she kept while she was awake. His sister did not act her age for sure, nor did she look fourteen. She was a lily withering away before she had the chance to bloom.

He left a kiss on her forehead, wishing her 'good night' before heading back to his room. The din of dishes and water reached his ears, even after he closed the door. He sighed, passing his hands over his face. 

‘I’d better take us out of here,’ he thought, ‘for her sake.’


	2. The Garden Of Light

Ara looked to the window where a clear afternoon sky basked in the glittering autumn foliage and old houses. The bright sunlight warmed Ara’s arms just enough to forget that the chill of autumn had already embraced the town. Underneath her forearms, the third volume of The Wardstone Chronicles laid open over her desk. 

The book series had been addicting, the raven-haired girl thought to herself. It made her wonder if she could use it for her own story. Days were growing colder as half of October passed by. The beauty of autumn would soon be engulfed under the first snow. 

Come to think of it, Lyra would also face the icy winters of the kingdom of Bel soon. She could face a winter demon, like Golgoth from The Wardstone Chronicles. in a blizzard. But just how would she defeat it when Reikal, her only mage ally, was no more? Lyra was a peerless swordswoman, but only magic could exorcise demons. If so, how would she defeat one? Ara had no answer to that, and she yawned, feeling slowly lulled by the peaceful quiet of mid-day. 

She closed her book and rested her head over her arms, still looking at the window.

The scenery of the second residential district of Velder today looked like the village of a children’s book. She closed her eyes, trying to picture if the kingdom of Bel, where Lyra was fighting in, would be just as peaceful once the war was over. The din of the end of lunch hummed its melody through the intercom of the classroom. Ara opened her eyes with a sigh, rejoicing in the last two seconds before a stampede ran through the corridor, full of obnoxious laughter and meaningless talk.

The door burst open as three dozen students, all unpleasantly exuberant, reduced the classroom’s quietude to atoms. Ara straightened up, pushing her chair closer to her grey desk as she caught a glimpse of Mrs. Daisy. The young silver-haired woman, who always wore an amethyst necklace around her neck was Ara’s history and homeroom teacher. 

“Good afternoon,” she hollered over the incessant buzzing of the class’s chit-chat. Little by little, the students turned towards the front, finally shutting up. 

Daisy nodded with a smile and took out from her desk her black clipboard and a blue pen from her purse, “Well then, we have a lot to go over today, so let’s get through the absences as quickly as possible, alright?”

Some people behind her answered or simply nodded. Ara simply turned her attention back to the window, focusing on two squirrels chasing one another over a nearby tree branch. She turned back after the teacher’s voice rose up for the tenth time. She was next.

“Ara?”

The girl raised her hand up high without a word, looking at the teacher. Daisy nodded and continued to go through the list. Once she was done, the silver-haired teacher took out a pile of photocopied sheets from one of the drawers and split them into six smaller rows. Ara lifted the lid of her desk and took out her impeccable, black pencil case. From it, she dug out a pencil, a pen, and an eraser. She completely ignored what Daisy was explaining, knowing that the sheet of paper would already have everything she needed to know written on it. 

When the white-haired girl in front of her turned around with the rest of the papers in her right hand, Ara nonchalantly took them off her hands, slid one sheet under her pencil case, and, without turning around, passed the rest along to the guy behind her. The classroom bursted into noisiness once again, chairs creaking and sliding loudly over the wooden floor. Ara understood why as soon as she read the first question:

_In groups of four, fill the following timeline of human history until present day_

‘Well, good thing we’re a class of thirty-seven,’ Ara thought as she began to work on her own. She never needed anybody's help for this. First, the Homo Sapiens appeared three hundred thousand years Before the El Lady, or BEL for short. Then, the stone age followed around thirty thousand BEL, and lasted until three thousand BEL. Five hundred years before the end of the stone age, the Sumerians invented writing.

“Ara,” Daisy called, standing next to her. The black-haired girl gently put her pencil away and looked at the copper-eyed woman, “Are you sure you don’t want to join a group?"

The girl shook her head and went back to her task, leaving the teacher to answer the questions of the nine groups of four that had formed in a matter of minutes. 

Ara had reached the date that Ebalon of Ruben published his Ninety-five Theses against the Elrian Church when the classroom lights began to blink. Time had run out. The children around her began to retake their places before the teacher told them to stay where they were.

“I have an important announcement,” she said, combing back her long curls to the side, “the administration has decided to _exceptionally_ hold Friendship Day on Halloween.”

Ara rolled her eyes; the thirty-six toddlers cheered on. Some even asked where the trip was going to be this year.

“The destination that the parents’ association suggested last year. And that is none other than...the amusement park on Resiam Island!”

The room exploded with an extreme cacophony that grated Ara’s ears. There was no room for her to tune out of this ruckus now. She would have to sit around and see who was forced to take her into the _oh-so-lucky_ group of three...

“You’ll have to choose a partner, just like last year. It’ll be first come, first served for the group of three.”

...Or not.

With a heavy sigh, Ara glanced around the classroom. Flocks of long-haired girls and their boyfriends were completely absorbed into their conversations. In front of the teacher’s desk, the three inseparable and nauseating girls were arguing with their male counterparts on who got to be the group of three. 

Ara looked back at the room and spotted a girl she was not sure she had seen before at the back of the room, like a lighthouse in the tempest. She was writing something down on her planner peaceably. That girl’s hair was a field of wheat, glowing gold under the sun. When the blonde looked up, the ocean of a tranquil summer met Ara’s gaze. 

The blonde nodded and got up. Ara turned away, thinking she had simply been in the way of whoever a girl like that was really looking at. She thought about skipping school on Halloween. She should simply spend the day at Aren’s university instead. His friends were far better company than anyone in this forsaken classroom. A chair creaked to her left; the silhouettes of a navy blue skirt and white shirt lowered themselves to her eye level. There was something golden over the shirt. Probably hair.

“Uhm, hi there,” a girl’s voice quietly mused. Ara glanced to her left, seeing the blonde sitting down and facing her. She waved at her with the corner of a smile.

Ara combed her short hair behind her ear and turned around. She did not notice how her lips managed to curl into a smile, “Hi. Are you alone for that event?”

The blonde chuckled, crossing her legs and awkwardly scratching her cheek, “Yeah, actually. A bit unlucky, I guess.”

“Same here,” Ara said, her amber eyes briefly shining again, “But two negatives make a positive, so our bad luck just ended. I’m Ara Haan. You are?”

“Anna. Anna Testarossa.”

Ara chuckled mentally at how Anna’s hair rebelled against her last name. She was the blondest redhead the amber-eyed girl had ever heard of.

  
  
  


The following day, a Friday morning, was chilly enough for her black coat and high boots. Ara crushed some fallen leaves as she walked down the sidewalk a block away from Lafayette Academy. She took out her MP3 player from her pocket, looking at the hour. Five minutes before seven. The side door next to the gym should be open by now. 

As she reached the street corner, Ara stopped and looked left, right, then left again. The streets still slept, except for the two or three school athletes who were heading to their practice. The black-haired girl crossed the street as if there were cars closing in, and, when she reached the other side, she still kept a fast pace. She pulled the heavy metal door open and slid in the gym, passing by the corridor that led to the changing rooms down to the staircase. She climbed down two floors, reaching the main locker area, completely alone. Just the way she liked it.

As she made her way to her locker, one of the security guards passed by. He was a tall, tanned man in his forties with brown hair and golden eyes. He looked down at her and nodded politely with a smile. Ara nodded back, expressionless, before turning left down to the end of the corridor of hundreds of lockers. She made the metal door clang as she spun her code into the lock. Her locker creaked as it opened. Her borrowed novels slept on top of some of her textbooks on the small shelf above, and her uniform shoes rested as orderly as soldier boots on the shelf at the very bottom. Ara dropped her backpack, unwrapped her scarf, and took off her coat. She hung both on the hangers glued to the walls of the middle shelf. Then, she crouched to change her shoes before taking her novels and everything else she needed for the two morning classes before putting her backpack in her locker. By the time she locked it all away, it was exactly four minutes past seven in the morning.

Ara walked back to the only exit open at this hour and climbed to the school's fourth floor. It was not so much a floor as it was a staircase and a hall leading to the school's patio. The sophomore sat down and set a timer on her MP3 player. Exactly an hour and twenty minutes from now, the library would open. In the meantime, this corner of the school was her little haven where she could finish her homework. 

With her headphones blasting Kalafina in her ears, the amber-eyed girl went about the basic algebra exercises with ease. Then, a chill slithered around her. Ara furrowed her eyebrows and looked to her right, where the door was. Anna had opened it, but she was clearly struggling to keep it open. Her arms were full of empty flower pots. 

Ara dropped what she was doing and rushed to help the blonde girl, holding the door for her. Anna was a forehead taller than her and had her hair tied in a bun despite the cold. The blonde thanked her with a smile and put the flower pots carefully in the corner of the corridor.

“Phew,” Anna put her hands over her hips, “that’ll be it for now.”

She turned back towards Ara, “Thanks a bunch. Do you have club activities too, Ara?”

‘Yeah, it’s called the club of being dead inside. Usually, we sulk on different abandoned spots of the school before and after classes,’ Ara thought, but she stopped herself from spitting the venom that burned inside her to Anna’s face like that. The blonde had nothing to do with her, after all.

Instead, Ara shook her head, “‘Fraid not. You, uhm, you’re in the gardening club, right?”

Anna stretched with a yawn, “Yeah. I’m the only member that’s left though. The rest were last year’s seniors, but I do my best to keep the greenhouse going. The administration likes having some gardening on the patio, even if most students don’t use it all that much. Wanna join me?”

Ara looked away from the starry brightness that shone in Anna’s eyes. Then, she walked back to where she had left her stuff, “I’m, you know, like, trying to finish the math homework right now, so, yeah…”

She put one headphone back in her ear as Anna raised an eyebrow, “The one due today or next week?”

“I already did the one for today two days ago. But I just, uhm, I like working in advance,” she managed to mutter, expecting Anna to giggle at how nerdy she was, but there was no such thing. 

Her eyebrows curved with amazement, and the way the sun glowed over her hair almost gave a white halo made of thin strands of hair that rebelled from the binding of her bun as a smile returned to her lips, “You work really hard. Hope you get it done soon, Ara.”

The blonde rubbed her hands together before she went back to the patio, taking the sun with her, but leaving a chilly gust behind. Ara looked back at her exercise book, scribbling the missing answers, slower than how she usually did. The morning soon felt warmer, and when her alarm went off, Ara looked at the heavy metallic door that led to the patio. She grabbed all her books and pushed the door open. Her amber eyes desperately looked all around her, but she could not find Anna.

Slowly, Ara’s gaze sank to her shoes, and she walked back down the stairs all the way to the main floor to visit the library. She left _The Spook’s Secret_ in the bin for returns and headed all the way down the left aisle, looking for the fourth volume of the Wardstone Chronicles. She swept the single-colour book covers but did not see the one with the number four in mustard yellow. From volume two, only volumes six through ten lined up to the right before the Twilight saga came into view. Ara frowned, seeing that her regularly scheduled reading time was spoiled. 

If she could not read, Ara figured she might as well write. She looked at one table at the corner of the room, where no one but her ever sat down to work, and took it as her usual place. Ara took out her pencil and opened her blue ringed notebook. Lyra had been struggling to keep the faubourgs from being overrun by the rebel army. And now, she had to face Reikal, her former right hand, in a duel.

'Facing Reikal...', she frowned at the thought. Not only was Lyra not a mage, but Reikal was the most powerful arch-mage _and_ necromancer in the realm. Why _had_ she made Reikal so powerful? Ara flipped back to her older entries and found the obviously stupid buildup to her answer. On her hundredth entry, the ritual to resurrect the Demon God was being prepared by the cult of Rhil. If they succeeded, the entire universe would face eternal doom. And, of course, Reikal was the one who needed to single-handedly undo the powerful necromancy spells set as preparations while Lyra sliced and diced the entire cult like The Bride from _Kill Bill_.

‘Yeah, Lyra would be reduced to atoms if she really had to fight against Reikal. Alternatively,’ Ara thought, tapping her lips with the eraser of her pencil, ‘I could make Reikal double-cross the barbarians.’

She stared at the last lines of her latest entry, pondering for a hot second if she really should do that, but her impulses were already set on making Reikal betray the cruel barbarians that wanted to bring the Kingdom of Bel to its doom. Her writing was messy and hectic, but she loved to make the most of it in the hour left before her first class began. 

Until she heard quiet chuckles behind her. The collar of her shirt was being pulled to the side by someone.

“Oh my, oh my,” a girl whispered, “She really lets you see her underwear. Too bad that cute bra is wasted on a tomboy.”

Ara closed her notebook and picked up her stuff. She got up at lightning speed to face who was the depraved pig who had just done that to her. Unsurprisingly, she saw none other than Edward Grenore, grinning victoriously at his two new friends. They both had white hair and, if Ara had to guess, they were related. Their blue eyes irradiated with the same malice.

“Hey, baby,” the lilac-eyed albino whispered, opening his arms as if expecting a hug, “you writin’ me a poem? That’s sweet.”

Just as Edward was reaching out to force a hug onto her, the black-haired girl glared at him and stormed away from the library. She ignored the teachers who hollered at her to stop running in the halls. She slammed open the doors leading to the emergency staircase and climbed them again until she reached the last floor. Even at this hour, the corridor was completely empty. Her face was hot, her blood boiled, and, irreparably, she hit the wall with the side of her clenched fist. She welcomed the numbing pain that reverberated up to her elbow.

“Fuck you. Fuck you,” she howled, hitting her fist time and time again, “Fuck you, Add!”

Ara took a deep breath, noticing she had sweated from running all the way up to the fourth floor. It was no wonder she was losing stamina after being bedridden for a while, but she did not think it would be this bad. The girl looked at her trembling fist, completely red from the tip of her pinky down the rest of her hand. She poked it, frowning at how warm and sensible it was. Well, writing would now be slightly painful, but hopefully it would not become a huge bruise. Ara looked up at the heavy metal door that led to the patio, her eyes were stinging again, but no tears would come. She had to hide that she was exhausted from just running for minutes, feeling the tears roll down her heart again.

Calmly, she pushed the door open. Her eyes hurt at the sudden brightness, her bangs waved over her eyes as the wind ruffled her hair. She took one hesitant step in, then a second one. The light was much less threatening, and she finally took a good look at the patio.

A stone-paved path stretched from where she was to a door in front of her. To her right, the fourth floor continued in an L, running along half of the patio’s width before a greenhouse full of flowers that Ara could not name hung from its ceiling or grew in rows of clay pots. To her left, two benches laid about two steps away from the edge of the building. Ara could not help but notice there were no fences.

‘They don’t worry about it at all,’ Ara thought, walking to the nearest bench before sitting down, ‘I mean, why would they? The administration thinks their students are happy and successful. After all, so many of the parents and former students are public figures. Nobody accommodates the school around the tendencies of one student.’

Come to think of it, she had failed even to put an end to everything. It had been the one thing she had yearned for for far longer than any of her family knew. It was just how it always was. Not even she could make herself do one last thing the right way. Ara sighed, looking up at the few clouds in the sky and closed her eyes. She was only two steps away, the air was cool, and, from here, she could hear that there was some traffic on the road below. There was a time where she had leaned over a balcony, looking up at the sky just like this. All she had to do was picture her fall. A free fall onto incoming traffic, her head split by a moving bumper, her limbs loosened into twisted articulations, bones shifting out of its place. She would morph into a pool of blood, bones, and guts once she hit the ground.

One big hit.

She opened her eyes and looked in front of her, suddenly feeling like the entire building was tilting forward with the wind that came from behind. Her guts churned, and her hands softly trembled under drops of cold sweat. She put her belongings to the side and clenched the bench as hard as she could, taking deep breaths with a frown.

‘The fear from the first attempt still follows me, huh?’ she thought, bending forwards as if she were to vomit at any second, ‘I’m pathetic.’

“Oh, is that you, Ara?” Anna’s voice chimed in from behind her. Ara froze in place, as if she had been caught trying to end her life once more. But that fear was unfounded, she thought to herself, because she had not even gotten up from the damn bench. She coughed, still feeling dizzy as she straightened up. Ara took her stuff and put it on the ground, leaving the space for Anna. 

The world was still moving far too much to look anywhere but down. The blonde sat to her left, and the first things Ara saw on Anna were old gardening gloves and her short-sleeved shirt. Was she immune to the cold?

“Are you ok? You’re so pale,” the blonde continued, leaning closer to put the back of her hand over Ara’s forehead. 

The black-haired girl jerked back. Then, she nodded at Anna with something close to a smile, “Yeah. I just got tempted to eat a double-chocolate cookie, but I don’t handle chocolate all that well in the morning, you see.”

The blonde rubbed her chin, as if thinking of something, “Hmm, I see. But you don’t look in shape for first class. How about we go get some tea and do some gardening instead?”

Ara’s eyes widened at what she had just heard. She blinked at Anna, “Uhh, we both should be in class in-”

The muffled chime of the bell cut Ara’s words short. She was going to be late. No, she was _already_ late. Her mind rushed from one thought to the next as if she had fallen prey to vertigo. Ara took a deep breath in, and, for an instant, felt better. 

“I don’t think we can skip class, Anna,” Ara said, “And anyway, a stomachache is not a reason to skip classes.”

Her surroundings spun again the moment she glanced at the edge of the patio. She almost fell backwards but found her footing at the last second. Anna rushed to her side and passed an arm around her, “Just a stomachache? Are you sure?”

Ara looked away, taking a step to the side to maintain her distance, “Well, uh, I _might_ have gotten that chocolate because I get this horrible pain every month, uhh, you know how it is...”

“Ara, are you sure you want to go to class like this?”

In truth, she did not. She remembered that that female friend of Add's she saw in the library was her partner in science class. With the little stunt Add had put on, that girl would surely make the class impossible to follow.

The black-haired girl hesitantly looked at Anna. Her eyes, usually so incredibly bright, were filled with worry. It did not suit her. A girl whose face was that of summer did not have to ever be worn down by the fall that dwelled in Ara’s eyes. The amber-eyed girl shook her head. 

A smile on her face was all it took to bring summer back to Anna’s eyes. She took off her gloves, clenched them firmly in her right hand, and offered her left hand, “If you need to, you can take my hand. I don’t want you to sprain your ankle on the way to the gardening club’s meeting room.”

Ara looked down at the long, yet delicate hand she had been offered. It was not supposed to be weird among girls, was it? She imagined taking Anna’s offer, but it simply did not _seem_ right.

“Uhm, Anna, wouldn’t it be, you know, more effective if you lent me your elbow? Like, we lock in arms, and it’s more solid in case I lose my balance. I think.”

The blonde’s eyes widened as she dropped her offer, and she chuckled, “You’re completely right! Sorry, I’m more used to dealing with children in cases like this.”

‘So, even if we’re about the same age, she just sees me as a kid, huh?’

Ara raised an eyebrow at the thought, but soon looked down to realize her arms were full, “It’s alright. Uhm, do you mind helping me with these?”

Anna nodded as Ara handed everything to her, “Sure thing. Otherwise not even holding arms would work," With ease, she carried everything with her right arm, and offered her arm to Ara. The short-haired girl sighed. She had no choice now. She slid her arm under Anna’s, noticing the position lent itself to lean over her shoulder. But she was not that dizzy to simply go ahead and abuse Anna’s offer. Having someone’s head on one’s shoulder must be incredibly bothersome. Not to mention it could be painful. 

The two girls reached the opposite door from which Ara had entered, walking down a hall down to the last door to their left. There, a white room with long desks, chairs, shelves filled with various boxes, gardening tools, and a small bookshelf with botany books filled the room in a harmonious chaos. On the top of the bookshelf, Ara noticed a disconnected electric kettle. Anna guided Ara to sit down on the chair closest to the door, left her things on the other edge of the long desk, and excused herself for a minute. 

Ara laid her head over her desk and closed her eyes. The corridor was quiet, almost completely so. There were people speaking, but just what were they saying? Ara focused, straightening up to hear them better.

“She’s with me, Mr. Horatio,” Anna’s voice echoed. Right. Mr. Horatio was always fashionably late to his classes.

'And that would just leave more time for the fucking white-haired whore to egg me on,' Ara clenched her fist at the thought.

“Take her to the infirmary just in case, will you?” the old man replied.

“Nurse Vapor isn’t here today, sir.”

Horatio sighed, “Ah, yes. She takes Thursdays off too. Well, stay with Miss. Haan, will you? Go to my office during lunch break. I’ll give both of you today’s notes and homework.”

“Thank you, Mr. Horatio.”

Ara took a deep breath, crumbling back to lay her head over her arms, and closed her eyes. She was not exactly tired, but she did not feel like doing anything anymore. Steps came closer to the room, and soon enough, Anna came in, lifting the blinds from the only window of the room, bringing in so much sunlight. The light from the incandescent light bulbs was unnecessary. Anna waltzed to turn off the light and turned on the electric kettle.

“Don’t worry about the water. I just poured it before I went out, so it’s fine.”

“I’m not worried at all,” Ara mumbled before yawning. She stretched out her arms and looked as Anna methodically went through different tea packets, most of them from foreign brands. Finally, she settled on a red packet, took out two paper cups and put one tea bag in each cup. The blonde put both cups in front of Ara then pulled a chair to sit in front of her.

Once she sat, she put both hands around the cup closest to her and looked down at the cup. Ara could not see what expression she had, but she did not like to see a reflexion of herself on someone who did not have anything in common with her. The amber-eyed girl grabbed her cup with one hand and tapped the table with the fingers of her free hand, “So, Anna. Does this mean that I’m the new official member?”

The blonde's eyes widened, shining with stars of hope, but something was restraining them from fully translating into gratitude, "Oh, wait, really? You want to join the club?"

Ara smirked, "Well, I'm already here, having tea. And we're going to do some gardening later," she shrugged, "So, why not? The flowers in the greenhouse are really gorgeous. If I could, like, learn to do things like that…" Ara combed uselessly her hair back, her smirk finally becoming a full smile, "It'd be pretty cool."

Soon enough, Anna returned her smile, her expressive eyes thanking her before she spoke, "Thank you so much, Ara. I'll have you do some paperwork to make it official, but not today. Today is for morning tea and flowers."

The lightbulb on the kettle began to blink, and Anna got up to serve hot water on both of their cups. The steam that rose from the cup was a sign that drinking it would probably hurt a ton. And yet, Anna took a good sip out of it.

Ara furrowed her eyebrows, leaning a bit forward, "Hey, hey, that's burning hot. Are you ok?"

Anna nodded, "Yes. I'm used to it."

Ara leaned back with a sigh, and shook her head, "Are you secretly Wonder Woman?"

Anna chuckled, "For just drinking tea when it's barely out of the kettle? I don't think so."

"You also go out with only a shirt, a knee-long skirt, and socks that barely cover your ankles outside when it's one degree. And you’re carrying all those textbooks in one hand while carrying me, too," she chuckled, "If that's not superhuman, I don't know what is."

The blonde seemed genuinely shocked, "Eh?! It was already that cold outside? I didn't feel it that much. Also, the textbooks aren't that heavy, and you barely leaned on me."

"Huuuuh, so you don't feel the cold?" Ara smirked before she blew on her beverage to cool it, "Do you only wear long sleeves after we're twenty below zero?"

Anna's pale cheeks coloured slightly, "I'm usually quite sensitive to the cold. If I had Ishmael's powers, I'd keep an average of twenty-five here all-year long for myself and my flowers."

"I'm just kidding. On the other hand, It'd be pretty nice if we got mild summer temperatures all year long."

Ara took a sip. This tea was pleasantly different from the one her mother made from time to time. It smelled of cinnamon and other spices, but the taste was mild.

"Is it your first time drinking _real_ tea, Ara?"

The girl nodded, "Yeah. Where do you get it?"

"Oh, I know a couple of tea shops in Hamel. I buy my manga at the nearby bookstores from time to time."

Ara's eyes widened, "You read manga?"

"Yep."

"Do you, uhm, by any chance, also watch anime?"

"From time to time. I'm more into Japanese music."

'Wait...all these coincidences...it can't be. But still, I need to ask it now that I've come here,' Ara thought, her mind was fired up as her eyes started to shine with quiet stars of its own. 

"Anna, do you know what Vocaloid is?"

The gazes of the two girls met with burning determination. The blonde slammed her fist on her table with a smirk, "Oh, you bet I do. Who do you listen to?"

"Uhh...Caz, Yuyoyuppe, and Utsu-P."

Rose raised an eyebrow, leaning back as her smile grew smug, "Oh, so you are a quiet, hardworking girl during the day and a headbanging metalhead at night. That's unexpected."

Ara looked to the side, pouting, "Yeah, but so what!?"

Anna chuckled wholeheartedly, "Aw, I'm sorry. I just thought it's really weird that we basically just met, and we have all these things in common," Anna took another long sip before continuing, "I don't like Utsu's stuff. It's just too heavy for me. But I like listening to _Leia_ and _Corruption Garden_ from time to time."

Ara looked back at Anna and chuckled softly, "Yeah, it's pretty weird," the black-haired girl took another careful sip of her drink, "but I don't feel, you know, _weirded out_ by that. It's been a while since I've found talking with a classmate, like, enjoyable."

"Me too, Ara," Anna's gaze was tranquil as she looked down at her cup and took another big gulp, "Although, now that you're a member of the gardening club, we'll both be less lonely. Two negatives make a positive, right?"

Ara nodded with a smile, even if she felt that she did not deserve to feel like the happy days of the past were coming back. It was impossible, she thought to herself. She had completely given up to ever be like she was back then. Therefore, she was unworthy of even getting a glimpse of it back.

‘Anything good always sours,’ the girl thought as she finished her tea, ‘What matters is just how much it’s going to hurt.’

She got up as soon as Anna herself did, heading back to the patio with only a half-hearted smile on her lips.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The sun was setting earlier in Eun's office, but the white haired woman saw that Ara's shyness was much less dispassionate. The scars of what she had gone through still dwelled deep in her eyes, but Eun saw a minuscule glimmer of change.

"Even if you didn't write a full entry today, you look better today, Ara," the psychologist said with a motherly smile, "Did you have a good day?"

The black-haired girl fidgeted in her chair, taking a deep breath. Her amber gaze never lifted up from her shoes, "Good and bad, I guess. I had to, well, Add came and ruined my personal time. That's why the entry today was really short...I'll have to find another spot to do things I like."

Eun took note of it. There was not much she knew about Add. Everytime Ara had tried to talk about what he had done to her, it always had made her go into a panic attack. When she calmed down, Eun shifted the conversation to something else.

"I, uhm, Eun, I have never told you much about him, have I?"

"No, but I know he's someone who has most likely hurt you a lot. I understand it must be hard to revisit that hurt to explain why, so don't feel pressured to tell me about him."

Ara sighed, "Oh, well. Since it's gonna be about seven months since we've talked...I figured I could give a short version of the events."

"Only if you want to."

The black-haired girl clicked her tongue, and her fists were clenched so tightly her knuckles turned white, "I, uhm, I mean, it's one of the things that contributed to my attempt to hang myself."

Ara nervously pointed at her head, "I…I _should_ tell you about it if I want to get better up here, no? Whether I want to or not."

Eun shook slowly her head, "Sometimes, Ara, we aren't ready to revisit some memories because the wounds are still open. If you feel that it's going to hurt more than it's going to help, then it's better to wait. Take it at your own pace."

Ara trembled under one of her many tearless, silent sobs. Her eyes were slowly drowning in agonizing panic.

Eun left her notes aside and leaned closer to her client, "You said something good happened today. Take a deep breath and close your eyes for me, please."

The girl slowly did as she was told. Once she noticed that, Eun continued, "Picture the good things that happened today until you feel more serene. Picture the good memories with your brother and his friends. The good times you had with your old friends."

It took Ara a good fifteen minutes, but she managed to return more or less to how she had been before. Yet, Eun noticed that the glimmer in her eyes was already gone.

"I, uh, I think I made a new friend today," Ara mumbled, never looking up as if she was being sentenced to death.

"Oh, that's great news, Ara!" Eun enthusiastically replied, "Could you tell me more about it?"

Ara glanced up at her and finally decided to sit straight. There it was again, the small light that had lit briefly Ara's gaze, "Well, she's a classmate. Her name is Anna, and she, well, she is in this gardening club at school."

"Mhm…"

The black-haired girl looked to the side, passing her hand around the back of her neck, "It's really weird when I think about it. I, uhm, usually just find people in my class to be annoying toddlers, but when we first talked yesterday, it was different. It was like I didn't _want_ to lump Anna with the rest of excruciatingly immature kids in my class. Like I was telling myself, you know, maybe she isn’t that bad. Maybe I can have fun on the so-called Friendship Day trip to the amusement park."

“So, you’re slowly regaining your trust in others. That’s great news, Ara.”

Ara scoffed, clasping her hands together, “Is it though? She just might abuse it and make me do all her work in that club of hers now that I joined,” the girl took a deep breath, “Not that it was unpleasant working with her in that greenhouse. But still. Everyone I trust stabs me in the back, eventually.”

She combed her hair back; it was still too short for a ponytail, Ara’s gestures had adapted to it, “I, uhm, you know, I’m not including you, Eun, in that list. You’ve been a nice person to me even if you know how much of a disgusting piece of human trash I am.”

Eun nodded, taking back her pen and notebook. She scribbled down more notes as she spoke, “Hmm, I don’t see you that way, Ara. You’re simply a girl who was hurt deeply but wants to get back on her feet. Maybe that’s why you gave Anna the benefit of the doubt, no? As awful as some people we’ve met might have been, we all look for another chance to be less lonely once we feel ready to take the chance. What do you think?”

Ara shrugged, “It might be the case. If I’m being honest, I don’t know why I’m giving _her_ , of all people, the benefit of the doubt. Like, we ended up having a lot of things in common, which is even more strange. It’s, like, you know, almost too good to be true. And, being the mess of a person that I am, I know that I don't deserve any genuinely good things.”

The girl looked down again, frowning. Eun, on the other side, pressed her lips for a moment, thinking how sad it was for a girl that young to say that about herself with the same casual conviction as anyone might say that the sun was setting now.

Ara passed her hands over her face, but the frown on her face was even deeper as she rested her chin over her clenched fist, “I don’t think much about it when I’m with her. She’s, you know, kind of too bright to let me think properly. But, once I’m by myself again, I think to myself: ‘Isn’t this weird? Why am I suddenly just letting my guard down in front of her? What’s wrong with me?’ And I don’t have an answer for any of that. It just happens that, with her, I forget to defend myself against people who act so straightforwardly nice towards me. Because I know the nice people are the ones who always trample all over me the fastest.”

The albino woman nodded, “Have other people in your class, recently, been nice to you besides Anna?”

Ara nodded, “There was this obnoxious girl, uhh, Victoria. I think that was her name. Last year, I was stuck with her on the same Friendship Day with her and her best friend. Victoria’s one of those little bitches who act all selfless and friendly to be popular, so she tried to approach me before. She was adamant to include me in her little clique of equally obnoxious little bitches. Pardon my language. I just really hate girls like them.”

“Don’t worry about that. On the other hand, you’ve never told me about Victoria,” Eun noted, “How did you respond to her attitude towards you?”

The black-haired girl scoffed, “I hated how naggy she was about it. She was all like ‘Oh, Ara, aren’t you all sad and lonely? You must be such a shy, weak-minded girl. Here, here, let me pat you like a fucking dog. I want us to be bffs, aren’t I so nice? Everyone likes me because I’m _oh-so_ pretty and nice, so you should like me too~’”

Ara had raised the pitch of her voice, enhancing her mockery of Victoria by replicating a puppet talking with her left hand. Then, she sighed, dropped the whole act, and continued her tirade with her normal voice, “I mean, I was also set on killing myself at the time. So, my mindset was, you know, already more in the gutter than it is now. Victoria tried to reach out to me the first day of classes this year, but I just basically flipped her off. I don’t need people like her in my life. Thank Ishmael she has left me alone since then.”

Eun nodded, adding one last line at her notes before looking at Ara, “So, you saw her kindness as fake or just annoying?”

“Both,” the girl spat, “People who have that mentality want something out of me in exchange for being my supposed saviours. And it’s infuriating to have people pity me. My problems are mine alone unless _I_ decide otherwise.”

“Hmm, I understand. But, if that’s the case, there must be something, perhaps just a gut feeling, that made you react differently to how Anna approached you. Or did you approach her first?”

Ara looked up for a moment, “Hmm, well, if you count making eye contact for a couple of seconds as approaching someone, then I guess I approached her first. But that’d be silly,” her eyes widened for a second, as a new idea lit her mind. She rubbed her chin, looking at her shoes again, “Wait, actually, I did go and help her this morning before she offered me to be part of her club. So, yeah, I guess I did approach her first, because of some gut feeling. But it’s gonna bring me more pain again.”

“Maybe not. You did say that you had fun gardening with her. What was it like? Did you get any red flags?”

The black-haired girl sighed, shaking her head as she looked at Eun again, “No. Like I’ve said, when I’m with her, it’s like I go back to how I was with Elesis and the other girls. I put my music on while we worked, and she taught me a bit of the flower names. I mean, I say taught, but it’s more like she pointed to each flower and said both its regular name and its scientific name. The only name I still remember is the Bluetiful Dahlia. I think it’s because of the inherent pun. She mentioned it was her favourite flower.”

“Did she work in the greenhouse with you?”

Ara chuckled, “Oh, she did most of the work. I got kinda overwhelmed with all those different names, the minerals, and types of soil that are better for some kind of plant over another one. I just poured water over the two cacti, to be honest. We ended up eating lunch together in the club’s meeting room, talking about Japanese music. Besides Vocaloid, we have little, how do I say this, hmm, I guess...music genres in common? She’s more into pop or acoustic songs than I ever will. She made me discover Gackt, and I got her to listen to Ain’t to die from Dir En Grey, and she liked it. So, I guess that’s an exchange of hobbies?”

Eun glanced briefly at the clock and gave one last supporting smile at Ara, “The way you talk about Anna is very positive, Ara. You’re smiling a little, you know?”

As if she had been caught stealing cookies, Ara looked to the side, "Not really. I mean, like I’ve said, it’s weird to feel this way again. Something must be wrong with me."

“No, not at all, Ara. Sometimes, we meet people in life, and we just click instantly. I suggest you try to second-guess yourself a little less and see where your friendship with Anna goes. Who knows, you might become genuinely good friends, like you did with Elesis, Eve and Aisha.”

Ara looked at the watch on her wrist and got up, “It’d be nice if there ever was someone like that again. But I doubt it. Have a nice evening, Eun.”

“You too, Ara.”

That evening, on her way back, Ara felt too peaceful to listen to the heavy guitars of Traumatic. Instead, she chose Macabre, selecting the song that gave the album its name.

‘Wait and see how it goes, huh?’ she thought to herself, ‘It might be the worst disaster yet.’


	3. Lights In The Festival

Ara stared at the incredibly steep fall of the roller-coaster named Great Colossus. There were still five people before them, all of them strangers. She passed her hand over the nape of her neck and nervously looked at Anna.

“Uhh, Anna... This is a, uhm, great fall. The thing just climbs at the height of the Ross bridge and then...”

The blonde was also looking at the ride with apprehension, “...Indeed it is. But don't worry, once the big fall is over, the rest will be a breeze."

Anna gave her a thumbs-up with her red, woolen mittens, but Ara could tell she was not even slightly confident. Her hands were shaking.

"You know, we could-"

As if it was karma set forth by Henir himself against her, the ride's bell ringed loudly, cutting her words off. The supervisor hollered for the next twenty people to advance. There was no going back now; the lines were far too long and thickly packed to easily find a way out. 

Anna put her hand over her shoulder, "We gotta grab this bull by the horns, and we're gonna show it who's the boss, right?"

Although her friend had put double the effort on trying to sound confident, it only made the impression more comically fake. It would be bad to sneak out on her now, even if Ara herself had oftentimes fallen prey to vertigo. The black-haired still offered an equally poorly executed act of bravery, nodding once with two shaky thumbs-up. The two girls got two places in the middle of the white and red cart after leaving their bags to the side. Ara took a deep breath. This was safe. She would be safe. At least, that was supposed to be the case.

Catching a glimpse of Anna clasping her hands nervously, Ara found the energy that would usually fuel her anger outbursts but channelled it more gently. She rested her hand over Anna's shoulder as the technician was lowering the security bars over each pair of seats, starting from the front.

"We're gonna be fine, Anna," Ara heard herself calmly say, "We already put on the seat belts, and the bar is gonna keep us in place. Don't worry. We're in this together, and we'll overcome this. You'll see."

The girl of the sun looked at her, surprised, and that was the needle that broke the boost of confidence Ara had bizarrely summoned out of a corner of her mind she had wished to bury and considered long dead. She leaned back, leaving as much space as she could between her and Anna, fidgeting in place.

"I, uhh, sorry, Anna," she said with a sheepish smile as the technician lowered the security bar over their row and made sure it was solidly in place, "I invaded your bubble without even asking…"

For the first time since they had been lining up for this roller-coaster, Anna smiled weakly but genuinely, "Don't worry about that. I was just surprised that even if you got nervous too, you still found a way to calm yourself this fast. You're really something, Ara."

'Far from it, Anna. My hands are still disgustingly sweaty. Thank Ishmael your coat is pretty thick...' Ara thought, looking in front of her as the ride began to move. She clenched the security bar as the cart clicked and clacked as it reached the sunlit bay over which the roller-coaster was built. As it ascended, Ara watched it climb past the copper-leaved maple trees, and she soon saw the river, blue as it could be under a mostly clear midday of October. The skyscrapers of Hamel's downtown reflected the sun's glow with their hundreds of windows. If Ara had looked to the right, she would have seen the roads on the Ross bridge at eye-level. 

And just as she held her breath at the panorama, the clicks and clacks died out. She blinked and, immediately, she saw her feet as if she were falling while standing up. She screamed as the ride rumbled wildly around her. Suddenly, something blocked her sight. It smelled of rose-scented shampoo. Her vision returned as the cart rose up again, smoothly, less high and less steeply than before. The remaining curve and other ups and downs were much more tolerable than the first one, and the unidentified object that had rendered her blind during the first fall was barely there anymore. The rest of the ride seemed to be built to qualm the panic the first fall gave her. 

Once the ride was over, Ara did not dare to move a muscle until the technician pulled up the bar once more. She glanced at Anna and noticed she had also been frozen like her until that moment, when she returned her glance. They took slowly their seatbelts off and wobbled towards the exit after taking their belongings. Anna looked to a stand to the right of the even longer waiting lines and nudged Ara to follow her. It was a stand to buy a photo souvenir of the Great Colossus. The photos of different parts of the cart during their ride were displayed over a TV in a slow diaporama. 

It did not take long before the camera had its sights on them as they fell for the first time. Anna had leaned back as much as she could in her seat, looking to the right, as if the cart was going to stop as long as she did not look down. Her frozen scream was a big 'No' that made her face look like she was mimicking a fish gasping for air. Her loose hair wrapped around everything in its reach, as if it also wished to hold on for dear life. Most of Anna's hair had landed over Ara's face. She was screaming in a big 'Ah', but one could not tell from the picture alone if it was because of the ride or the sudden mass of blonde hair that was covering more than half of her face. Her own black hair was completely combed back, surrendering absolutely to the blonde invasion.

Ara was the first one to chuckle. She could not help it. It was absolutely ridiculous. Anna joined her laughter, facepalming as she shook her head.

"Oh, I'm _so_ gonna buy that pic. Be right back," Anna said, still grinning as she walked closer to the counter to splurge those ten dollars on the photo alone. She stored it away in her handbag, taking out her grey scarf to wrap it again around her neck. Unlike what Ara would have initially expected, Anna dressed herself in darker colours; grey coat, black jeans, and boots. The only colours visible on her were almost tailored to dim her natural radiance, save for her mittens.

Ara was not exactly in any position to criticize her, though. Her mother had the final word on what she could put on or not. And, as such, while Ara herself would have preferred to wear a dress, or at least a skirt, she had no such luxury. She wore a pair of blue, bell boot jeans with her black ankle boots and black tweed coat. Underneath her coat, she wore a simple black t-shirt that was ample enough to hide most of her curves. It was not flattering towards her femininity at all, but then again, Ara knew she had never truly learnt how to be a girl. These were the only kind of clothes she had grown to be comfortable in.

Anna walked past her and spun around to face her friend with an amused smile.

“Well, then,” the blonde enthusiastically said, clapping her hands once, “Where do we go next, Ara?”

The black-haired girl looked around her and pointed towards the incredibly tangled mess of blue and purple steel straight ahead with a straight face. The ominous Sea Serpent was a roller-coaster where the riders always had their legs hanging in mid-air. Anna immediately froze, her smile losing its colour to a shocked anger.

“Ara...no.”

“Oh thank Ishmael you said no. I was kidding,” Ara sighed with relief, “I’d have a heart attack on that one. Wanna go grab a bite?” She added, looking at her wrist watch, “It’s a little after one.”

Anna chuckled nervously, “I’m, uhh, my stomach is still a little tied up after all of that, but I’ll go.”

“You can order some water. It always helps to stay hydrated.”

The girl’s blue gaze looked to the side, “Yeah...buying something…. I can totally do that with how overpriced everything is around here.”

Ara’s eyes widened and she slid one of its shoulder straps from her arms to swing it in front of her. Then, she scrambled along the smallest pocket to take out her wallet, “No worries, no worries, I have more than enough. My brother is such a worrywart he just gave me too much pocket money.”

She counted the ED bills, it added up to well above the one hundred twenty ED, “And one hundred forty. We can eat pretty much wherever we want, even the fancy restaurant up the hill if you’re up for a hike in the park outside,” Her face lit up with a smile, “Where do you want to go, Anna?”

“Woah,” Anna’s eyes widened before she began to walk again. Ara followed to her right, “Did your brother get that allowance from your parents or…”

“Oh, my mom would just leave me about fifteen dollars if it was up to her. Aren recently got a job as a software engineer. I’ve already told him he doesn’t have to splurge his savings like that for me, but he never listens…” Ara sighed with her eyebrows furrowed. Then, her cheerfulness returned to her face, “But it’s a good thing just this once. I could never be ok with sharing a meal if the people I’m with aren’t even drinking water. So, take the lead, Anna.”

Anna smiled a bit longingly, “Your brother must really care about you.”

“In some ways, he does. Do you have siblings, Anna?”

The girl nodded, “A brother, too. Younger one. Zero’s a total little rascal. Nags me everytime he can so I can give him the computer to play his games. Unfortunately for him, I’m actually busy with schoolwork. And botany.”

Ara was genuinely surprised by that, “Oh? Doesn’t he have his own?”

The blonde clicked her tongue, “He did. Until he started making the Internet bill go _way_ up. Then, my father decided he wouldn’t get his computer back until he started being reasonable with its use.”

The black-haired nodded, noticing that Anna was shining even less as she talked about her family. It was probably better to drop everything. After all, she, of all people should know better than to nose in people’s lives. Ara spotted a shooting stand not far from where they were, where countless plushies gathered up for the taking. 

“Anna,” Ara called out, “How about we try a bit of that before going to eat? There’s probably still a lot of people from school taking up every spot.”

The blonde raised an eyebrow, “Oh, a shooting stand? I’d love that.”

As she started to scramble for coins in her pockets, Ara walked past her before turning around to shake her head at the pennies her friend was offering, “Hey, hey, Anna. This is still my treat. Don’t worry about it.”

The blonde nodded with a thankful smile and followed her friend in front of the mostly empty stand. Ara paid ten dollars for five tries and awkwardly aimed the toy rifle towards the pyramid of cups.

“I haven’t played with these things in ages,” she said with a smirk, “Can I have three tries out of the five?”

Anna, who was watching her from the side, nodded, “Sure, sure. Good luck!”

The black-haired girl focused on the middle of the pyramid and pressed the trigger. The plastic stick somehow got fired upwards and barely made the top cup budge. With a pout, Ara tried again, this time aiming lower. She missed wildly, her shot fell over the wooden surface where the cups were, a good inch away from the base. Her frown deepened, and she took a deep breath, aiming to the top cup, which could be easily knocked off if she just aimed it right. The shot went flying upwards and bounced off one of the belly of the gigantic monkey plushies hung at the back.

With a defeated sigh, Ara let go of the toy weapon and let Anna take aim. The blonde took her mittens off, rubbed her hands together, and took hold of the weapon as Ara had seen real hunters get their weapons. Anna took a deep breath, stared at the pile in front of her, and fired the two remaining shots one after the other. She cleanly knocked off the top cup, earning a medium plushie of her choice from the stand. Anna settled on a teddy bear wearing a navy blue hoodie.

Ara clapped at her, smirking, “Anna Testarossa, fastest shot in the West.”

Her friend rolled her eyes with a smirk of her own and handed over her prize, “Guilty as charged, sheriff Haan.”

The black-haired girl hesitantly took the gift, completely taken aback by that random gift. She stayed frozen there for a couple of seconds before rushing back to Anna’s side, “Wait, Anna, why? It’s your prize, why give it to me? I don’t de-”

The blonde shrugged, “Why not? You’re treating me to lunch. I gotta return the favour somehow.”

The amber-eyed girl looked down at the plushie, noticing its hoodie had the wrong year written on it with big white roman numerals. She softly smiled, “Thank you.”

While they talked on the way to the restaurant area, pondering where to eat, Ara’s gaze lowered from time to time at the plushie she was now hugging tightly over her chest. There laid her rare moments of silence where her true radiance came back with a weak smile. 

They settled on eating at Phoru Hutt a slice of pizza for each with water bottles to drink. Ara’s eyes widened like 2 ED coins when she saw that the bill had almost hit thirty ED, which made Anna tease her about how she acted like she was the one without money. The two friends sat to eat. Ara put the teddy bear in her mostly empty backpack and turned back to open the triangular box where her pizza slice was. Once she had revealed her choice of topping to the world, Anna frowned at her.

“Ara, how dare you.”

The girl tilted her head, “What?”

“Pineapple? Really?”

The blonde feigned an offended gasp, parodying the women in old movies when they were about to faint, “Oh, by Ishmael, this is outrageous! You’re not gonna take the first bite, are you?”

Ara looked down at her meal, exaggerating the scheming poses of Saturday morning cartoons. She pretended to curl an invisible mustache over her face, “Yes, Anna. I am the evilest pineapple enthusiast in the world and I…!” She took the pizza out of the box and took the first bite off it. Once she had her mouth empty again, Ara continued her act, “I shall make you watch how much I enjoy this pizza! You are immune to my hypnosis, but the rest of humanity is not! Soon, everyone in this park will join my forces, and pineapple pizza will reign supreme!”

Anna laughed, pointing at Ara with her index, before taking out her pepperoni pizza, “Oh, you’re good at this. Were you in the drama club last year?”

As Anna ate, Ara shook her head, “Nah. In grade five I just did a lot of improv with my classmates because the homeroom teacher was into it. I’ve never even touched anything close to theatre since then.”

Her friend nodded, swallowing her bite before she spoke, “Grade five, huh? So, it’s been quite a while. What other talents do you have?”

Ara opened her water bottle, “Hmm, well, my mother likes to have me try to learn piano, but I’m not exactly talented for it despite my big-ass hands,” she ate another, bigger bite of pizza before continuing, “Other than that, you could say I like singing, even if I’m only comfortable singing songs sung by guys. My vocal range is terrible.”

“You really think so?”

Ara nodded with a self-deprecating smirk, “What’s good about being a female singer if you can’t express your femininity with high, delicate notes?”

“But the higher the pitch, the harder it is to hear it from a distance. Maybe you have a lower tone because your singing is made to be heard loud and clear, no matter where the audience is.”

Ara stopped chewing her latest bite of pizza, staring blankly at her friend for a moment. Then, she shook her head slowly and swallowed. She took another sip from her water before she scoffed briefly, shaking her head again, “Thanks, but you haven’t really heard me, so trust me when I say I have a really bad voice.”

“Oh, but that’s still something I’d look forward to. I’d gladly join you and cheer you on until you get the range you want.”

The black-haired girl smiled sheepishly, “By Ishmael, that’s a bit corny for a compliment. Where did this image of me singing in front of an audience get inside your head?”

Anna shrugged, “Sorry, sorry. I guess it’s just a feeling, Ara, from seeing you act just a while ago. You have, I guess, the radiance to be on a stage.”

Ara chuckled joylessly, and muttered as quietly as she could, “ _Tu te trompes. Celle qui brille, c’est toi._ ”

When Anna got curious about what she had said, Ara lied expertly, saying that their time to be back on the bus was approaching. They finished their meal, and in less than twenty minutes of going against the flow of the river of visitors, the two girls finally reached their group. The teachers guided them back to the parking lot, and from then on, Ara’s day went about as normally as any other Friday could have.

* * *

The monday of the second week of November had taken the gardening club by surprise. The first snow was falling heavily and had already accumulated for a good twenty centimetres by the time they got to the club room.

Ara sighed, staring at the storm brewing around them from the room’s window, “And it’s fifteen under zero...the cacti and Dahlias are going to die first. Can’t we ask someone for a shovel? Maybe we can get everything out before they’re too damaged.”

Her friend slowly shook her head, looking anxiously at the increasingly foggy view they had, “I did ask as soon as I got here, but they just shrugged it off. By Ishmael, the poor things are gonna freeze...”

The black-haired girl bit her lip and dashed out of the room. When Anna asked what she was planning, Ara continued to run, hollering that she would be right back. It was still early enough for the security guards to not have made their rounds in the floors above. No, she had observed all four for long enough to know that at exactly seven o’ five, they were barely getting a cup of coffee and talking loudly from their room in the basement. The amber-eyed girl jumped the stairs in sets of four, reaching her locker in record time. She put back on her winter coat and boots before dashing back up all five floors. While gardening was not exactly the same as basketball training, Ara had recently felt that her endurance had improved since she first started her sophomore year. She felt her feet warm up, probably sweating by the time she made it to the only access to the patio she would have known had she never talked with Anna.

She tackled the door, almost losing her footing in the snow. The wind was much more intense up here, curtains of snow powder blinded her as she made her way to the greenhouse. Ara grunted, using all her strength she could summon to push the frozen doors open. Once she could step in, she was breathing heavily, barely feeling her naked fingers freezing red as she walked slowly through the small building and took the three pots of small cacti in her hands. She failed to close the door, and fell face first to the ground. The spikes of the plants she carried dug into her flesh, but she felt superhuman. She was more worried that the pots might have broken than her bleeding hand. The black-haired girl got up once more and did the longest roundabout to get back to where Anna was. 

She went down to the third floor, now too exhausted to continue running, walked through the main hall, turning left, then right three doors down before finding the other, much more hidden, staircase leading to the rest of the fourth floor. Because the rest of the floor was mostly made of the teacher’s offices, it was no wonder not many students knew about the “secret” fourth floor.

Ara pushed the door open, frowning at the pain in her right hand that was now waking up to the dozen spikes that had dug into her palm. The amber-eyed girl looked up and saw Anna at the top, her eyes widened before she hurried down, crying out loud all the names of the saints in the Elrian Bible.

Ara offered her a weak smile once they were face to face and offered her the three cacti she had managed to save, “I wish I could’ve lifted more, but the security guys were probably gonna lock the door before I could get back in.”

“Ara! That was so reckless!” She took the pots from her and put them on the corner of the first step, her eyes were fixated on the thorns in her hand, “Oh my El, we gotta take you to the nurse’s office. What were you thinking?!”

“Hey, hey, Anna. Calm down. It’s just some thorns on my palm, no biggie. At worst, it’s some bruises on my knees _and_ some thorns on my hand. It barely hurts, really. What’s important is that all the work we put isn’t going to waste because some crony adults didn’t want us to save the fruits of our labour. Well, mostly your labour. It would’ve been too sad to see a grave of plants once spring came back.”

The girl of the sun gave her a complicated smile, her eyes looking at her with a quiet glow Ara did not know how to describe. Worry? Anger? Disappointment? Anna sighed, shaking that expression off her face and lent Ara her arm once again, “Come, Ara. I’m taking you straight to nurse Vapor.”

Ara accepted her offer, letting a tense silence settle in. After a moment, the black-haired girl raised an eyebrow as they walked down the stairs to the second floor, “Wait, Anna. Are you angry at me?”

“No. I’m worried sick that my best friend went running to face an incoming snow storm to save some cacti. Even if it’s some bruises...Ara, it could have been much worse. I appreciate you worrying about me, but you also gotta worry about me who worries about you.”

Ara chuckled joylessly, “And there is the Gurren Lagann reference.”

“Well, it’s my favourite anime, and it’s hecking appropriate to use it right now. Don’t try to spin a joke on this, Ara. This isn’t funny. You should know that it’s never funny to see a friend get hurt!”

The black-haired girl sighed, welcoming back the tense silent between them as they finally made it to the infirmary. The door was already open, and Vapor, an old nurse, raised an eyebrow at them when they came into her view. Before Anna left, Ara put her left hand over her shoulder, “I’m really sorry, Anna.”

The blonde did not turn back, but simply nodded and walked calmly away before Vapor closed the door and began to tend to Ara’s wounds.

* * *

The rest of November went by without awkward situations between Ara and her only friend. They never talked about the cacti incident again, although they kept the plants and took care of them every week during their morning meetings, usually on Thursdays. As the eighteenth day of December came about, Ara sighed at her open planner, swallowing nonchalantly at the date she had highlighted in pink.

“By Ishmael,” she said, making Anna raise an eyebrow as she munched on her sandwich, “What a gift for my birthday…”

The blonde tilted her head, “What’s up?”

“We’re gonna get the results of our final math test back. Like, in about thirty-five minutes.”

“What about it?” Anna asked, getting up to get some tea for both of them, “The test wasn’t that bad. I’m sure we all did good on it.”

Ara managed to nod with a smile, “Yeah, I was just kinda thinking it’s funny for a birthday present. But I’m sure it’s gonna be a great one.”

“Wanna do something special today? Girl’s karaoke evening. Just the two of us.”

The black-haired girl shook her head with a chuckle, “You’re gonna have to give me some wine if you want me to sing in front of anyone.”

“Well, my dad does keep some wine in the house. How about it? Oh! And we could do a sleep-over too. It’s Friday, anyhow. Sounds pretty good, what do you think?”

Ara looked away, embarrassed to have to decline Anna’s requests when she was so enthusiastic about it, “Sorry, but my family already made plans for the weekend.”

“Oh. Could I come?”

The black-haired girl pressed her lips, wishing she had never learnt to lie so well, “I wish, but my mom made reservations for exactly ten people and everyone on her side of her family is gonna show up… I’m really sorry, Anna. We couldn’t get the eleventh place.”

The blonde shook her head, her tranquil smile back on her lips, “No, no. It’s all good. You’re so lucky to have such a big family coming together for your birthday. I was kinda hoping I could see you for a while longer before I went on vacations with my dad and my little bro.”

‘Anna, can’t you tell I’m lying?’

Ara sighed, “Man, if I could make an eleventh reservation appear, I would, Anna.”

“Don’t worry so much, Ara. I understand. We’re gonna see each other again a week after New Year’s, anyway. I’m still gonna miss you, though.”

‘I’m such a despicable liar,’ Ara thought, taking a sip of her tea, still keeping her composure even if her thoughts angered her, ‘Liars don’t deserve friends like her. I should just cut her off my life if I’m just gonna continue to lie forever. Might as well take the backstabbing right now than later.’

Ara’s mind was growing as dark as her hair as she headed to the classroom. She begrudgingly participated in the Kahoot quiz Mr. Denka had put up for all the students to review in a supposedly fun way what they had learnt over the year. A few minutes before the end of the class, a message from the principal in the intercom reminded them that today was only a three-period day and wished everyone a Merry Christmas. Mr. Denka struggled to calm the class down to give out their corrected copies. Ara stared blankly at the F on her paper. She waited until everyone, even Anna, had gone away before walking towards her teacher, who was only waiting for her to leave.

“You wish to talk about your test, I suppose,” the orange-haired, middle-aged man said, adjusting his glasses.

Ara softly nodded.

Her teacher took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and took his glasses off before looking at her again, his eyebrows furrowed, “Is everything okay, Ara? At home, at school, in your club?”

The girl nodded, “Yes. Just peachy. How come?”

“Well,” the man rubbed his mustache, “How do I put this...It’s strange for me to see one of my top students last year decline in her grades so fast this year, out of the blue.”

“Ah, well, sir, that’s easy to answer. I’ve just become too involved in my club, and I’ve neglected my studying. I’ll correct that. I just want to ask you something. Do I still get a passing grade for this trimester?”

Denka put back his glasses with a sigh, “Well, considering that you racked up straight As and some Bs for a good deal of the other important tests, then yes. I think you’ll still have a good C+, maybe just a C.”

The girl offered him a polite smile and bowed slightly, “That’s very reassuring. Thank you, sir. Happy Holidays.”

She walked off as calmly as any other day down the stairs, still looking at her grade, feeling increasingly numb to everything that had happened in the year. That was insignificant to what was awaiting her once she put a foot home with this paper in her hands. Just what had she been thinking, joining a stupid club instead of trying her best to get back to the peak her mother wanted? At least if she stayed at B+, she could have hoped that her mother would get used to that new normal.

Ara left everything but her test and MP3 player in her locker, climbing up the stairs to the corridor she knew so well. She sat down, back against the wall and her test in front of her feet. What if she just threw it away? She should tear it to shreds, burn it, curse herself out for being so incredibly retarded, and…

Without realizing when it had started, Ara found her vision blurred away by tears. Her chest hurt, her throat tied itself painfully, so much so she had to allow herself to sob quietly. With her head low, caught in between her hands, the black-haired girl cried all the tears she had been keeping locked away for years. The tears her mother had beaten her for, the tears which Add had laughed at. The tears her so-called best friend Ignia had ignored to defend Add. Every tear grew more bitter than the darkest of coffees, and it burnt her throat more than Anna’s burning hot tea fresh off the kettle. And from her quiet sobs, she allowed herself to wail just a little louder. It was too much.

Something warm wrapped around her shoulders, something rested on her head, and the scent of a familiar shampoo came to tickle her nose. With her pride completely stripped away from her, Ara allowed herself to lean on the girl who was willingly embracing her even if she was at her weakest. Ara was not pushed away, or stabbed, or ridiculed. Anna’s arms only held her tighter. They were the perfect cradle for Ara’s bleeding, dying heart.

After what could have been only a few minutes or almost an hour, Ara took a deep breath, which was now only a sniffle because of how much she had cried. She sighed with a smirk, thinking she should have backed away from her friend’s embrace, but her body refused to move. Or perhaps it was just her mind.

“Sorry you had to see me be so incredibly pathetic, Anna,” she scoffed, “I mean, who cares about a stupid test, am I right? I still pass the trimester. Nothing to cry about.”

“Don’t say that, Ara. It’s good that you got to vent all that grief. I could hear that those were tears you needed to shed. Tears you hid away completely.”

Ara’s eyes widened, but she still did not dare to look at her friend in the eye. Anna continued to talk, “You know, after seeing you changing from the Ice Girl in class to being so friendly to me...and what you did for the cacti, I got worried you were bottling so much up. I’m glad you let at least some of it out today.”

“You’re glad…” Ara echoed in a whisper, still leaning on her friend the same way she leaned on her. The black-haired girl closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the warmth and closeness of someone who had seen through her heart. If only she could make this last forever…

"Yep. I'm glad, Ara."

'If I talked, I'd ruin this perfect moment. But if I was just a little stronger, I would tell her that-'

Ara opened her eyes, stopping her own thoughts from going into something a tad strange. She glanced over her watch and got up in a flash, “By Ishmael, my brother must be worried that I’m still not out.”

The amber-haired girl picked up her test swiftly, only mildly aware that her cheeks were flushed pink, “Oh my El, this is gonna be embarrassing! Grandpa Hie is going to fall asleep if I don’t hurry! Bye, Anna! Have a nice trip!”

She waved at her friend before running down the stairs, her thoughts all focused on that warm, tender hug. No, she should stop thinking so much about it. It was ridiculous for her heart to get all excited. It was just a hug. Girls gave each other hugs all the time. It did not mean anything special. It _should not_ mean anything special. She was just overly emotional now. Once she talked to Eun today, everything would be put back to its rightful perspective.

'Yeah, that's right,' Ara tried in vain to shake off Anna's lingering warmth over her arms and the scent of her shampoo from her nose.

She packed her stuff in a hurry and left the school. Ara decided to wait for Aren next to the nearby bus station. Fifteen minutes passed in the soft winter cold before she saw the recognizable silver sedan pull up to the school's empty parking. She walked back and sat down as usual, without a word to her brother.

Ara closed her eyes, suddenly feeling exhausted.

"What happened today, Ara?" She heard her brother worriedly ask from far away. 

For the first time in months, she had a pleasant dream. She felt comfortable, just warm enough and cuddling someone in her arms. The bed she was on was fancy enough to be of some five star hotel. And then, she heard a familiar voice speak next to her.

"Remember, Ara, all those years ago...we were just like this."

And just as she was about to glance down who she was cuddling with in bed, Aren tapped her shoulder, suddenly waking her up. They were already in the parking lot of Eun's office. Ara yawned as she got out of the car. This time, Aren followed her to the entrance.

"You sure you wanna stay?" Ara asked her brother, "You get bored waiting, don't you?"

Aren shook his head, "Mom is working a night shift, so I'm gonna take you to Niji for your birthday, Quinzeañera."

Niji was a fancy sushi bar not so far away from Eun's office. Ara offered him a faint smile, "You really should stop spoiling me so much…"

"I'd never spoil you, kid sister."

Ara left her brother in the lobby and, before she took the stairs to the second floor, she looked back at Aren, who was the only one besides the secretary.

"Brother," she called. Her brother almost immediately turned his attention towards her, "Thank you so much...you're always the only one who makes today special."

She turned away and got on with her usual meeting, feeling anything but as she usually did whenever she talked with Eun. 

She awkwardly rushed to sit down in front of the red-eyed woman, and the only thing she could do was hide her face with her hands.

"By Ishmael, Eun, I swear to Elria, the Mother Above, that I just became crazy for a moment. Like, actually bat-shit insane."

"You seem to have cried quite a bit," Eun hesitantly began, "Do you want to tell me about it?"

Ara's face became red up to the tip of her ears, "Oh by the El! Where do I even begin with this?! It's like, you know, I have a friend too good to be true, and then part of me goes like: 'Hmm, yes, this person right here is the right one to have a stupid crush on!'"

"Oh."

Ara uncovered her face, but her voice grew louder, faster. The frown she had hidden was only growing deeper, "And then my damn subconscious also plays tricks on me and says: 'Oh, yes, Ara. What you need to see right about now is your adult self in bed with some mystery woman right before your brother wakes you up!'"

"I see. Hmm, so you have developed romantic feelings for-"

"Nonononono," Ara rapidly said, shaking her head, "Crushes are between girls and guys. Romantic feelings between a _woman_ and a _man_. They're different from this. This is some kind of delusion I need to get rid of."

Eun took a deep breath, looking briefly up to think well about what to say, "Hmm, I see. Was this...well, what you consider to be a delusion, triggered by something you can remember, or has it been a lingering feeling that has grown to the point where you can no longer push it aside?"

Ara sighed, crushed by her misplaced shame, "I, uhhh, I don't know. I think it might be a bit of both."

After a couple of minutes of silence, Ara found the courage to explain what had really happened with the cacti incident, how genuinely horrible she had felt. She also explained today's embrace, as detailed and honestly with her feelings as she could.

Another minute of silence ticked by since her monologue. Ara passed her hand over the nape of her neck, "Look, Eun, I've had sex ed classes. I know it's, you know, possible for girls to fall in love for other girls. But like, I've also had a brief crush on a guy friend I've had before. So, like, maybe I'm both into guys and- argh!” 

Ara’s hand ruffled through the back of her hair, “Look, Nevermind. I'm too young to self-assess whatever this is. And either way, this crush isn't legit. Back to my actual and legit crush though, it was, you know, understandable for a dumb twelve year old. First albino guy who calls you pretty becomes the guy you fall for because that's just how your brain decided to interpret it. Because it doesn't know any better, and because it believes novels and anime can be real life, too."

Ara clicked her tongue, "That's how kids think. That’s why they’re so naive. But now...If I were to really look at how I've been feeling, then I'd have to come to the conclusion it was love at first sight, which only exists in dumb movies. Like, you know, it's not an actual thing in real life. That's why it pollutes books and movies alike. If it were a thing in real life, nobody would write a novel or make movies around it."

"But still, you're coming to the conclusion you might have fallen for Anna at first sight."

Ara nodded gravely, lowering her voice to a nervous mumble, "That's why I think there's something wrong with me. Maybe I've become delusional, and I confuse a good friend with a possible girlfriend. Even if we assume love at first sight is an actual thing, who am I to live in that kind of fairytale?"

The girl scoffed, "I'd make a horrible prince charming, making his princess cry while trying to save her, lying ‘till the very end about every problem I have because I don't want her to ever feel sad when we're together, but I still fuck _that_ up. And as a princess," Ara chuckled sadly, tears coming back to her eyes, "I mean, look at me! My own mother basically forced me to be raised like a boy and scolded me every time I tried to be feminine. And I can't even have long hair now! Who am I to live in a happy ever after when I'm so damn flawed, huh?! I'm the evil witch who'd ruin Anna's life, so I'd just better hide it all, drown it all, like I've always done. As long as I don't hurt her, I can live with it..."

For the first time since they've met, Ara broke down in sobs talking about someone other than Add. She had simply given up on ever trying to be happy, even if it pained her that much. Eun let her cry, passing her the box of Kleenex she kept over the corner of her desk. Once Ara had calmed down, she swept away her last tears and blew her nose.

Ara took a shaky breath in, "That, uhh, was oddly, hmm, I guess it was liberating. Like I have one less weight on my chest."

Eun nodded, giving her client an encouraging smile, "I'm glad you felt that way. You know, Ara, since you got here a bit later than usual, we’re already running out of time, but I want you to hear me out."

Ara nodded, "Yeah, sure. I'm listening."

"I would like you to see all those feelings you’ve just let go and don't look at them as if they're bad, like you should hide them away. This is not a goal you need to rush, but try to see your feelings as what you need to finally get back on your feet. I'll be here to help you, so keep walking at your pace."

Ara scoffed, "So, you're telling me I could become her prince charming one day?"

"Don't underestimate love as an engine for positive change, Ara. Oh, and before I forget," Eun opened one of her drawers and got a small bucket full of small Hershey's chocolates, "Happy birthday, Ara. Don't give up on yourself."

The girl's smirk died out, her eyebrows raised with surprise for a second before a calmer smile came to her face as she chose a mini dark chocolate, "Thanks, Eun."


	4. At The Boundary Of Dusk

August thirty-first marked the first day of classes for Lafayette Academy. The summer was still unscathed by any of the first signs of autumn. Ara sat quietly down on her assigned desk, calmly reading _The Three Musketeers_. She had stopped seeing Eun since July, and Ara now looked like a different woman from the shell of a girl she had been. Her black hair reached her shoulders, held together by a simple, low ponytail. She still wore the unisex uniform, but she had changed the loose clothes that hid her curves for something more flattering. Her amber eyes, who used to always be so afraid of ever truly reflecting any emotion, were serenely shining under the sun that filtered from the window. Anyone who looked at her could tell she was truly enjoying her reading time, just as much as the cacophony of other seniors who talked to their friends as they came into the classroom.

From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of the blonde sitting right next to her. Ara shifted her focus away from her book. Anna glanced at her, the summer Ara had seen in her had only grown much more attractive as years went by. Her gaze, enhanced by light mascara, was even more of a pleasant ocean to dive into. Anna’s blonde hair was tied in a messy bun, but any hairstyle was bound to look good with a face like hers.

“Well, aren’t we lucky, Anna?” Ara began with a smirk, turning around to face her friend, “Three years in the same class.”

“Oh, Ara!” The blonde sat down and looked at her, “How was your summer?”

Ara chuckled, “It was alright, just chilling at home. How about you?”

“Good, good. I worked at a summer camp for children with special needs,” she clasped her hands together as the enthusiastic glow in her eyes glew. It was just like her to always love to help anyone in need, “We spent a lot of time inside, but it was totally worth it, for the experience and for the money. I’m gonna try to get my driver’s license before January.” 

Anna’s reminiscing finally faded away, and she finally took a good look at her friend, “That said, long hair looks good on you.”

Ara’s lips curled half-way, much more confidently than before, “Thanks. It’s a bit tacky though, with all this heat. I’m kinda regretting postponing my regular appointment with the hair salon. But my determination is bigger than my regrets!”

“That’s the spirit! Why did you decide to grow your hair out, though?”

The black-haired girl took a deep breath, “Well, you know, I finally decided to return to the stage. For the Christmas party, I’ll sing something. I want to have a long french braid for that event.”

“Oh,” Anna clapped softly, “That’s great! What are you going to sing?”

Her friend shrugged, “Dunno. I still got about a month to prepare and pass the auditions. Even if I’m not selected, long hair would also look good for prom.”

Anna’s eyes lit up at the mention of prom, “Yes! Prom! I think I already found the best dress ever, but I still don’t know how to dance a waltz, and I have so many hairstyles to choose from…”

The blonde sighed, “So many things to prepare for that day, it’s unbelievable.”

“Well, with that much energy, I’m sure you’ll manage. As for the waltz…” Ara awkwardly passed her hand over the back of her neck, “You know, a family friend recently married, so I also had to learn how to dance and-”

“Teach me.”

Ara shook her head, a weak smile on her face, her cheeks turning slightly pink as she looked away from her friend, “I’m not exactly a pro here, you know? And I can only think of one free weekend I’ll have from now until prom. We have to take care of the greenhouse. I have to get my voice back in shape, choose my dress, and have a really nice GPA for college, ya know? I’m a busy girl during school days...”

“A day is good enough,” Anna replied, “My place or yours?”

“Oh, uhm, I, uhh,” Ara was at a loss of words. She had only half-jokingly suggested it, but she had completely underestimated how serious Anna was about it. Rhidia had grown a little softer on her daughter, but not soft enough to agree to let a teen whose parents were not part of the family’s friends to set foot in the house, “Your, uhh, yeah, your place. Mine’s kinda too messy right now to dance properly. My mom decided to renovate a bunch of rooms.”

“Alrighty,” Anna concluded enthusiastically as the bell marking the first period rang, “We’ll continue talking about it at lunch, how about it?”

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

The first two periods and break passed like Ara would have wished they had always been. She now reached out to other classmates, considering them somewhat friends, but she always kept most of her focus on the girl of summer who had torn away the darkness from her amber eyes.

They came together to the club’s meeting room, where the two new members had already taken place to eat. Laby, Nisha’s extroverted twin sister, waved at them with a grin, “Oh, you’re here! Nisha put some water to boil already, Anna.”

The blonde nodded, going ahead of Ara to sit down in front of the two sophomores. She looked at Nisha with a gentle smile, “Thank you so much, Nisha.”

The quiet, indigo-haired girl nodded before taking another spoonful of her salad, “It’s the least I could do. We do have shorter classes than you guys today.”

Laby sighed, poking one of her cherry tomatoes with her fork, “Man, I can’t believe you two are seniors already. Who am I gonna rant to about _Aoi Hana_ if Ara goes away? She’s the only one who listens even if she never reads it!”

The black-haired girl chuckled, taking a piece of sauteed broccoli from her glass container, “Hey, hey, what’s this, the weeb club or the gardening club?”

“It’s both,” the three other girls answered in unison.

Ara comically feigned to be shocked after she swallowed, tapping her fist on the table once, “Shit, you’re right.”

Nisha softly chuckled, “It’s the first time I’ve seen you joke around, Ara.”

The girl shrugged, “I guess it’s the legendary senior-year effect. I gotta leave a good impression on my underclassmen.”

Anna shook her head, “Nu-uh. You’ve always got that spark in you since I’ve known you. Speaking of Ara’s hidden spark, Nisha, Laby, you wanna know what she told me?”

The twins leaned closer on the table, pushing their half-finished salads to the side. Ara continued to eat, silently, calmly as Anna began telling them all the context that led up to her friend finally deciding to sing for the Christmas party. The two stared at Ara, pleasantly surprised. The amber-eyed girl did not have to lift her eyes from her plate to know the request that the twins would inevitably make.

“Ara,” Nisha began, “You sing?”

Their senior slowly nodded, calmly finishing her rice as Anna got up to serve everyone a cup of tea. Laby’s voice chimed in right after her sister’s, “Sing a song for us, Ara! I wanna hear you!”

Ara put her lunchbox to the side and took the cup Anna offered her, “Alright. It’s gonna be one hundred ED per second. Cash only,” She took one of her hands off the cup and reached out to Laby, her palm facing up, “Pay up now or wait until the party.”

“Ehh?! That’s not fair, Ara!” Laby crossed her arms, pouting. Her sister put an arm around her, trying to cheer her up.

“It’s plenty fair,” Ara continued, taking a short sip of the hot tea, “Right now my voice is all rusty. It’s better if you hear me once it’s back at its peak. Of course I’d ask for something unreasonable to sing right here and now.”

Laby’s sour mood soon vanished, “Oooooh,” she exclaimed, “I see, I see. As expected of Ara, always wanting to be at her very best. Have you guys thought about prom yet?”

“Right! I almost forgot!” Anna exclaimed, “Ara, when are you gonna teach me to dance? I’m free on the weekend of Labour Day.”

Laby’s smile turned into a smug one, “Oho? What’s this unexpected development I’m seeing?”

Ara rolled her eyes, “Oh, please, Laby. It’s not like I’m a guy or something. I’m just helping her out because she’s my friend.”

The pink-haired girl sighed and laid her head over the table, utterly disillusioned, “Right...Gee, real life is so boring compared to shoujo-ai manga.”

Ara nodded, “I guess so. But if real life was not boring, we’d never have good manga to distract us.”

She looked at Anna, “That said, Labour day works for me. It leaves me a couple of weeks to prepare for the auditions and all.”

“Then, it’s settled,” the blonde nodded with the smile that had melted away all the ice in Ara’s heart, “Labour day from eleven to six. Does that work for you?”

“Of course, just tell me your address, and Aren will come and take me there.”

* * *

  
  


Labour Day, a Monday, came by faster than Ara would have hoped. She hesitated a bit to open the door. Aren glanced at her, “This is gonna be fine, Ara. I already put my friends on the know so they tell the same story. As far as mother knows, we’re studying in the Central Library of Hamel.”

“That’s, uh, not exactly what I’m kinda worried about.”

Her brother took his sunglasses off, raising an eyebrow at his sister, “What is it?”

Ara took a deep breath and shook her head, finally opening the door, “Nothing, Aren. Thanks for having my back!”

She walked to the front door of Anna’s home, a duplex barely fifteen minutes away from Lafayette Academy on foot. The amber-eyed girl climbed the stairs and rang the door furthest left. The muffled steps of a dog came about before Anna’s voice. Just as the door opened, a big german shepherd jumped towards her, hugging her and licking her face, as if she was its master.

Ara almost lost her balance under the weight of the animal but welcomed the surprise hug with pats for the dog, “Woah, now _this_ is what I need to start liking Monday mornings...” she managed to say, turning her face to the side to avoid having any more dog saliva over her face. 

“Haru, sit!” Anna’s voice hollered. The shepherd did as it was told, but still wagged its tail at Ara, looking expectantly to get more pats. Anna sighed, looking at Ara, “Sorry about that, Haru can get a little crazy when new people come here. She’ll leave us be from now on.”

Her friend stepped away from the door, and Haru followed soon after, “Come on in, Ara. Make yourself at home.”

Ara walked in and took her shoes off at the entrance. The apartment was much more cramped than the houses she had been into, but it still looked cozy. Anna was wearing a simple light-grey turtle-neck sweater and a black mini-skirt with black thigh-high socks. Haru went to her bed near the kitchen counter and laid down. Seeing Anna skip around before dropping over the sofa with her laptop left a brief glimpse of her underwear engraved in Ara’s eyes.

‘...May Ishmael forgive me for having something more concrete to fantasize about’, Ara thought, taking a deep breath to calm herself down. She slowly walked towards the sofa and watched as Anna scrolled down iTunes playlists, frowning.

The blonde looked up at her, “Oh, hey, I thought I had saved the playlist I wanted, but no luck. We’re gonna have to make do with my dad’s old ballads.”

Ara shook her head, “Oh, no. You don’t start learning with music and the whole thing. First thing is to get the basic steps down right.”

Anna nodded, “Gotcha. Makes sense.” She left the laptop to the side and got back on her feet, “So! Let’s get this done!”

Ara nodded and stepped into the five-feet wide space, passing uncomfortably a hand over her cheeks. She was blushing, “Uh, first, could I wash my face from Haru’s kisses? I think I’m smelling a bit too much like her.”

“Oh, sure thing. Second door to your right, straight ahead.”

“Thanks.”

Once behind the closed door of the small bathroom, Ara wanted to scream. Her heart was beating wildly, and her cheeks were now completely flushed. Her palms felt soaked in sweat. Just what was she thinking, accepting such a suspicious invitation? Learning how to dance wouldn’t take them until six; it was just unthinkable. And, out of all the dances, it had to be the waltz. Six was a good time for dinner. No, five was already late enough. Aren would probably move heaven and earth to allow her to stay for longer. After all, Anna was home alone until tomorrow afternoon. She could make a nice supper for both of them, dance some more, and then…

Ara opened the cold water to the max and splashed her face with it, ‘No, Ara, NO! GET THAT SHIT OUT OF YOUR HEAD! THAT COMES AFTER MARRIAGE!’

She thoroughly scrubbed her face with the cheap aloe soap and washed it even more times than it would be necessary. When she dried her face with a towel, she had managed to purge the redness over her cheeks and had calmed her thoughts from being above and beyond the realm of realistic expectations. She noticed she had left some a small puddle of water over the floor. She took the same towel and did her best to dry it all frantically. The towel was surprisingly absorbent.

She returned calmly to the living room, clapped once, and stood in front of Anna, “So, let’s begin.”

The blonde raised an eyebrow at her, “Uh, Ara, your t-shirt is soaked from the neck to your chest. Did the faucet act up on you? I’m gonna go get you a change of clothes. You’re gonna catch a cold with that.”

“Oh, don’t bother, Anna. I’m peachy.”

However, Anna did not want to hear anything about it. With a cold stare, she crossed her arms, “Remember what I told you that winter?”

Ara shook her head with a defeated smile, “Fine, fine. I’ll worry about you who worries about me.”

Her friend’s brightness returned, “Exactly. I do have one or two unisex shirts for you.”

The black-haired girl walked back towards the bathroom and stood in front of the door, waiting for Anna to come back from her room, on the opposite side of the hall. Ara took a deep breath, ‘By Ishmael, Anna. Give me enough hope, and I just might go ahead of schedule... Only you could do that to me, my eternal sun.’

A minute later, Anna came rushing towards her with a simple black shirt, which was not unisex at all, “There. Change fast, alright? I’m waiting.”

Ara took the shirt from her and headed inside the closed space again. She looked at the shirt. It was definitely a woman’s shirt. She sighed, saying goodbye to the loose, comfy feeling of Aren’s old band shirt, almost expecting to choke with something that was so glued to her skin.

However, the shirt was comfortable in its own right, albeit a little transparent. Ara was wearing a black bra, so it did not look bad. She stared at her reflection for a second and thought that perhaps buying a shirt or two women shirts would not be too bad.

She came back to the living room, “Okay, take two! Ready to learn some basics, Anna?”

The girl of summer nodded with a confident smile, “You betcha,” she swept her from feet to toes and chuckled, “Hey, that looks better on you than on me. Black suits you.”

“Oh, thanks,” Ara said, looking briefly down, before focusing on what she actually came to do, “So, in waltz, there’s the Lead and the Follow. Their steps compliment each other but are slightly different. What would you prefer learning? Lead or Follow?”

Anna passed a hand nervously over the nape of her neck, “Well, usually it’s the guy who is the Lead, no?”

The black-haired girl nodded, “Yes, that’s right.”

Ara’s friend had a different kind of calm smile, one she had never seen before. It made her face shine under a much more precious emotion Ara could not quite name, “Then, Ara...I’d rather be the Follow.”

‘Could it be..?’ Ara thought, stopping herself for a second. She kicked the thought out of her mind and walked next to Anna, slowly explaining how to start, lightly step backwards with her right foot first. Already, the blonde had a tendency to step back with her left foot. It took ten attempts to get her to naturally begin to take the first step back with her right foot. Ara had not even introduced the natural slow rhythm of the six basic steps, and Anna was struggling to get the different ways to step around in a waltz. 

Both of their stomachs growled with hunger by two, but they had luckily done some progress by then. Anna invited her to some egg sandwiches she had made that morning and apple juice. 

“Man, this waltz thing is going to be the end of me,” Anna sighed, looking down in defeat as she took a sip of her drink.

“You’re getting there, Anna. Don’t worry. You’re gonna be dancing good enough by six, I guarantee it. If you continue practicing, you’ll be a dancing queen by the time prom comes around.”

Anna chuckled, “Nice Abba reference.”

The amber-eyed girl tilted her head, “Abba?”

“Oh, so you don’t…” she waved her hand up and down, “Nevermind then. I must be getting too into my dad’s music taste. Still listening to Utsu, after all this time?”

Ara shook her head, “Nah. I got a bit tired of the high-pitch. I discovered Buck-Tick and got more into Diru over Utsu. Heh. I might just be a metalhead till I die.”

“I can’t wait to hear you sing like Kyo on Christmas, singing, uhh, what was the name...Oh, _Ain’t afraid to die_ ,” her friend giggled.

Ara shook her head, “Nah. Kyo’s voice is unique in this world. I would bring shame on Diru if I were to try to imitate their vocalist. I’ll choose something else.”

“Like what?”

Ara shrugged, “I still haven’t figured it out, but there’s about two weeks and a half left before the auditions.”

“Oh? It isn’t like you to not plan things fifteen steps in advance.”

‘Oh, you’re sorely mistaken if you don’t think I’ve planned stuff at least thirty steps in advance, Anna.’

Ara shrugged, “Welp, what can I say? I just can’t be that meticulous about that. I kinda decided it at the last minute.”

“Eh? That reminds me of someone,” the blonde said after swallowing a bite of her sandwich, “You know, there were eight members in the gardening club, including me, before.”

“Uh-huh,” Ara muttered before taking a sip of juice.

“Well,” Anna combed her hair behind her ears, looking down to other memories, “One of the members decided to say goodbye to his friends here with a song. He set on it at the last minute, but from the way he played, you wouldn’t have guessed it.”

Her blue eyes focused back on Ara, “I’m really excited to hear you sing on stage, Ara.”

The black-haired slowly nodded, seeing something different in the way Anna was smiling at her. She hoped for the best and discarded her worries in the back of her mind.

Once they both finished lunch, they soon came back to their practice. Anna was now ready to practice her steps with the proper rhythm. It took another hour and a half before the blonde teen was finally comfortable and in sync with the basic pace of her steps. She was much less awkward dancing than when they had first begun.

“See, Anna?” Ara said with a smile, “You got it. Now, we should be ready for the music and partner dance.”

“Oh, then, hold on. I want your opinion on something. Be right back.”

She dashed into her room and closed her door. Ara raised an eyebrow and sat down on the sofa, looking at the ‘Best Ballads’ playlist on the computer. She glossed over the many names of songs, albums and bands she assumed to have been a hit of her mother’s generation. Maybe Aren knew some of them. 

The door finally opened after a good twenty five minutes. Ara lifted her eyes from the computer screen, and all her mind and heart stopped as Anna emerged from her room, wearing a crimson dress. Her hair fell like laced silver and gold over her uncovered back. The dress’ sleeves were more like bands a little below the elbows. The skirt began under a fine line of shining silver diamonds that highlighted Anna’s waist. The skirt itself hid her legs almost as perfectly as it should have. The dress hugged her torso beautifully, making her natural glowing beauty burn all the brighter. It did not matter if her hair was flowing naturally, if she had no makeup, the dress alone had brought the eternal sun goddess before Ara’s very eyes.

Anna chuckled nervously at her silent stare, looking away, “It doesn’t good very good, huh? I still haven’t made a final choice, but I had my cousin bring over hers to me just to try something out. Something darker would look better on me, right, Ara? Like red wine.”

Ara blinked, snapping off her contemplative torpor at the mention of her name, “Hm?”

“This dress looks kinda bad on me, doesn’t it?”

“No,” Ara casually shook her head and looked back at the computer, fearing her cheeks were growing beet red again, “It looks good on you. What song do we start with? Do we shuffle through it?”

Ara heard her friend’s steps. On top of the dress, she was wearing heels. ‘Ishmael all-mighty, just how hot can you be, Anna? You really want me to rush my careful plans, don’t you?’

“Anything’s fine. As long as the volume is at max, it should work.” 

Anna took place in the middle of the small space they had used to practice and waited for Ara to turn the volume up and select the first song, named _The Lady In Red_. The black-haired girl took place in front of her friend and put her right hand softly over Anna’s left shoulder blade. She fidgeted a little when her friend put her left hand over her right shoulder. The two girls took their free hands and clasped them together, softly, not like two lovers might have. Still, Ara exhaled a bit nervously once they were ready to begin.

“Is something wrong?” the blonde asked.

“Hm?” Ara looked at her friend’s eyes, “Oh, well, no, not really. Let’s get going, shall we?”

Ara still felt that even if she kept her cool, everything she was doing, from where her eyes were looking to how her hands were placed on Anna’s body, would betray her real feelings. The goddess she was dancing with, however, did not look any different as any other day. Her serenity dwelled in the peacefulness of the moment, returning Ara’s gaze, but not gazing into her heart like she had done before. 

‘Anna, you saw right through me every time for years. You do realize how much I love you by now, don’t you?’ she thought, holding Anna just slightly closer to her. She let her dance partner do a spin before pulling her back towards her, almost dancing cheek to cheek. Ara closed her eyes for a moment, contenting herself to catch a brief scent of Anna’s hair, simply imagining she had been a little braver to say how she felt. But, deep down, she wanted to dance more, wordlessly, with the girl she had fallen for.

“I think I’m really getting the hang of it,” Anna said as normally as she had always spoken to any of her friends, “Thank you for being so patient with me, Ara.”

The black-haired girl opened her eyes, taken out of her reverie, and looked at Rose’s eyes. The ocean was going towards a different shore.

Ara pressed her lips for a second, but managed to smile nonetheless, discarding the depressing thought that had just occurred to her, “It’s nothing, Anna. I’m just glad I could help you.”

The two danced for five songs before Anna saw Aren’s car outside, “I think that’s your brother.”

Ara looked at the window and saw that her own midnight had come with the boundary of dusk setting over the horizon. The black-haired girl took a step back, taking one last good look at her own Lady In Red. She gave her friend two thumbs up, “Anna, if you go dressed like that to the prom, your dad will have to get his hunting rifle and use Haru’s help to get all the boys off your case.”

Anna shook her head, chuckling softly, “I really doubt I look _that_ good. But thank you, Ara. See you tomorrow.”

The black-haired girl took back her belongings and, once she closed the car door, she sighed.

“How did it go?”

“Almost dream-like, brother,” she said, still smiling at the small chance she had had at dancing with a goddess, “Actually, it was dream-like. She was the best dance partner.”

“I’m glad to know that, Ara. Her name’s Anna, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm, she’s a good friend if she can make you smile like that. So, what about those auditions? Did you find your song?”

Ara nodded, closing her eyes, “I found the perfect song.”

* * *

  
  


Ara was frowning as Nisha tied her hair in a side French braid. The girl was pulling her hair so much, “For Ishmael’s sake, Nisha! The objective is a braid, not tearing my hair off!”

“If you stopped moving your head, it would be hurting less,” the quiet girl coldly answered. Her sister stepped in front and looked attentively at Ara.

The pink-haired girl whistled, “Wow. Just an elegant black jumpsuit, an almost finished braid, some jewelry, and Ara Haan is gone from this world. Who’s this Hollywood actress sitting in front of my eyes?”

Ara rolled her eyes, “Don’t be silly, Laby. I’m as plain-looking as everyone else.”

Nisha sighed, “And voila. Braid done,” She joined her sister and her eyes widened too, “Woah.”

“She’s stunning, isn’t she, Nisha?”

“That, she is. Ara’s gonna be the queen of the night, I can feel it. She’s just missing the final touch.”

The twins smiled smugly at one another and scrambled for makeup brushes and a palette of some makeup powders. Laby approached her, “Ara, lift your head and close your eyes.”

Ara glanced suspiciously at the palette, “What’s that?”

“Eyeshadow and some liners for your eyes. Your face is pretty good as is, even your eyelashes and eyebrows. But if you’re gonna sing for your Lady In Red, you gotta show her that you got her colour in your eyes. The eyes are the gates to the soul, so that means you have her in your soul, too.”

The black-haired girl nodded casually, “Yeah, that’d be a nice touch,” Then, the way Laby had talked about the song she had chosen hit her like a truck. Her cheeks flushed pink as she suddenly straightened up on her chair, “Hey, hey, hey, wait a sec, Laby. What do you mean by _my_ Lady In Red? You, uhh, like, you know the, uhm, you know, that thing’s not called that. It’s _The_ Lady In Red.”

Nisha giggled, “Oh, I didn’t know you’d be so easy to tease, Ara. You always looked like the cool, mysterious type. The song’s for Anna, isn’t it?”

Ara felt the temperature of her face become as hot as a volcano’s in an instant. She laid back on her chair almost falling backwards. Laby grinned, “Oh, I knew my shoujo-ai radar was picking up something~ Now, Ara, please close your eyes so I can give you the final touch.”

The amber-eyed girl begrudgingly did as her underclassman asked, relaxing enough to let Laby tilt her head as she needed for the make up. Nonetheless, Ara continued to speak, “How could you, of all people, have picked up on that?”

“Hmm,” Nisha began, “We always kinda thought you were kinda close with Anna. Like, you had that compatibility aura only _really_ close friends have. It only clicked when you sang your song in exchange for our girl help. It’s like you sang with all your heart. The only thing I could think of is ‘Ah, so this is how much Ara loves Anna. These are her true feelings.’”

“I mean, I’m planning on giving her a rose and inviting her to prom on top of sort of serenading her. Do you think it’s good to confess after all that?”

Laby gasped, “Oh. My. El. She’s going to do it!”

“Laby, watch out. We don’t want the diva to look bad.”

“Right, right~”

The girl who was working on her makeup continued to muse, “Are you kidding me, Ara? You’re gonna serenade her, give her a rose, invite her to the prom, _and_ confess to her all before Christmas? If it was me, I’d ask you to marry me on the spot!”

“You wouldn’t, though,” Nisha intervened, “You’re not _that_ much into girls. Especially not ones older than you.”

“Aw, Nisha, come on,” her sister had a pouty voice, “We gotta motivate our girl Ara to go out and get her woman!”

Ara chuckled sadly, “That’s a possibility, though. I might be the only one to love her. But I won’t know for sure if I don’t tell her.”

* * *

The spotlights blinded her as she stepped onto the scene. The crowd of teachers, students, and parents clapped all around her, but Ara could not see their faces from where she stood. Once she was on the middle of the stage, she bowed and took the mic from its support as the applause died down.

The lights focused on her, some dimmer than others, but they blinded her completely as the instrumental began. Ara took a deep breath and imagined Anna standing right in front of her, dressed with that dress that had made her ascend to godhood.

“I've never seen you looking so lovely as you did tonight. I've never seen you shine so bright,” she sang with a tender smile, using her free hand to reach out gently out to the crowd she could not see, imagining she was close enough to caress the cheek of the woman she loved.

She slowly walked across the stage, softly speaking her love with her expression and gentle gestures with her free arm. Ara let her heart pour itself into the song as she reached the last lines of the chorus, “But I hardly know...this beauty by my side!”

The crowd cheered, energizing her although she knew the next line, the last one of the chorus, had to be soft, like a whisper she did not dare to voice when they had danced alone, “I’ll never forget the way you look tonight.”

The audience clapped during the pause before the next verse. For a moment, Ara thought she could see some people rhythmically swinging their arms from side to side, and that movement was spreading across the rows. Yes, that was the feeling she remembered from long ago, taking that energy and channelling even better through her voice. She would use that same energy to make everyone hear just how much she loved Anna, her eternal sun.

But for them to understand, their hearts had to go back in time with her, to the time Anna had reached out to rescue her from her old demons.

“...And when you turned to me and smiled, it took my breath away. And I have never had such a feeling. Such a feeling of complete and utter love, as I do tonight.”

‘Anna!’ she thought as she reached the chorus for the last time, ‘Anna, you said my voice was meant to be heard. Hear it! Hear it because this is my heart and soul singing for you!’

She danced a little as the instrumentals died down, sliding in the last line of the original song in a whisper, “I love you.”

The applause that thundered all around her was even louder than the one for the rest of the performers. She could hear people whistle. It was a standing ovation. One, then two roses fell on the stage. One white and one red. She picked them both up and waved at the crowd with a smile on her face before bowing again. The cheer lasted minutes, but Ara walked back to the backstage.

‘It has been quite a while since I’ve felt this energized,’ Ara thought, laughing softly as she looked at the two roses the audience had thrown at her. 

The twins came to her before she could go back to the changing rooms. Laby rushed in to give her a huge hug, “Ara! That was amazing! I got so many goosebumps even watching you from the TV!”

The pink-haired girl let her go, and her calmer twin nodded, “I gotta say, you really seem in your element with a mic in your hand. Maybe you can become a singer.”

Ara chuckled, “Yeah, I guess I could have. But I’ve decided to follow my brother’s footsteps. I like doing that more. Did you get in touch with Anna?”

Laby vigurously nodded, “Yep, she should be waiting for you up on the patio.”

“Thanks, Laby,” the black-haired girl replied, patting her briefly before dashing out to reach the emergency staircase. Like so many times before, she climbed to, what had been for a long time, her place to sulk. But she was not dragging her feet and looking down to her feet. No, this time, she held her head high and walked confidently towards the exit, two roses in hand.

The copper rays of dusk were already below them, the sky above them was clouded with an indigo mantle, and some stars had risen. Even if it was December, snow had never come. Winter had been simply an autumn with longer nights. Ara saw her beloved sitting on the same bench where they first met. The black-haired singer sat next to the plainly-clothed blonde. Anna looked more nervous than usual, her smile forced itself to be serene. It was a bit too dark for Ara to tell for sure if her sunshine was blushing, but she had a feeling she was.

“You…” Anna began, more softly than usual, “You really slayed on that stage, Ara. It was breathtaking.”

Ara smiled, ignoring the cold breeze that was rising, “I’m glad you think so, Anna. But you know, I couldn’t have gotten back to any stage if it weren’t for you. I would’ve never put my heart on a stage that way if you hadn’t come along. And so, that’s why I first want to ask you if you’d like to come to prom with me.”

Anna looked down for the first time since Ara had known her. 

Ara chuckled softly, “Well, it’s still early, so I’ll let you think about it. But I must have an answer for my second request, Anna”, Ara softly put her hand over hers and left the two roses on Anna’s lap, “You’re probably gonna think I’m being silly, but I’m not. I’m as serious as I’ll ever be with you. I don’t want you to laugh it off. You’re almost a legal adult. So, take me seriously even if I’m still a kid. Okay?”

Anna slowly nodded, her hair ruffled by the wind to cover her face. She did not move any more than that. Ara leaned her head over her shoulder, looking at the neighborhood beyond them. 

The black-haired chuckled nervously, needlessly combing her hair behind her ears, “By Ishmael, sorry. Even now, I’m still nervous,” her stomach was tied with doubts. Perhaps she should just go away. But her heart beat even faster, rushing her forward. She licked her lips before finding the courage to overcome the knot in her stomach, “Maybe you’ve never really thought of me that way, but you’re the reason why I’ve recovered what I thought to have lost forever. This...the way I am right now, it’s the person I’ve been hiding before. The person I thought to be dead. But you changed all of that, Anna. You’re probably the one person I always want to keep close to me.”

Ara took a pause to take a deep breath. She felt her face get redder, but there was no more fear, no more shame to let her hidden thoughts flow freely, “But you know, it’s kinda cheesy and near-impossible asking someone for a bond for life. We all fall apart, some day or another, for a multitude of reasons. But even so, Anna, you’re quite literally the sun who shone the light over me. So, now that all the darkness is gone, I want to be by your side and love you without any regrets. Any amount of time you want to stay with me is fine.”

Ara felt dizzy as her true feelings were laid out. She was holding Anna so close to her. She needed to breathe.

The black haired girl left her lover some space, “That’s why, Anna, I want to ask you to be my girlfriend if you feel even a fraction of how I feel about you.”

Anna took a deep breath, “By Ishmael, Ara, that…” she combed her hair back, “that is a sweet way to confess.”

The sky grew darker, and Ara could not see her love’s trembling fists. She only wanted to meet those blue eyes, those eyes she had lost herself in more times that she could count.

Her heart filled with hope, and she grinned, “Then-”

“But you’re not the person I want to hear those words from,” Anna’s voice was shaking under sobs. 

Perhaps it was seeing her cry that allowed Ara to externalize her own desire to break down, or perhaps she had always expected this answer, deep down. The darkness the sun left behind as it died became clearer. The lamps around the patio lit up, and, now, Ara could see perfectly that she had trampled over Anna’s heart.

Anna sniffled, swiping back her tears, “Sorry, it’s not your fault. None of this is. You know I told you the club had this one member who sang during the last day of school? You know, to say goodbye to all of us.”

Ara nodded.

“His name is Ainchase,” Anna rubbed her arms, “And I fell for him, much like you fell for me. I really should have foreseen something like this, given how similar we are. I’m really sorry, Ara, I can’t...” she took a shaky breath in, “He already agreed to drive me to prom and...I hope I can be as brave as you were tonight to tell him that I still love him on the way there.”

The black-haired girl turned away from her friend, letting her hand go. She looked at the almost pitch-black sky straight ahead of her. A long silence followed; Ara felt it consume her heart with acid flames. She was no longer smiling with joy but with regret. She clapped her hands once and sighed, “Ah, well. I hope you do gather all your courage. If Ainchase’s someone you care about that deeply, then I’m sure your bright words will reach him. And with that dress, he won’t say no.”

Anna turned towards her friend, “But you know, Ara, we, uhh, we could still keep in touch. We could still be friends.”

Ara bit her lip and shook her head. With eyes glimmering with a hopeful resignation, she turned to look at the woman she had been one year too late to steal her heart. She managed to give her half a smile, “No, Anna,” The black-haired girl put her hand over her own heart, “My heart, right now, will still look at you as a lover and not a friend. It has been looking at you that way for years now. Let’s not ruin our good memories together with bad ones. I want to see you happy, holding Ainchase’s hand, and feel that it’s ok. I want to feel that I can see you shine as brightly as you’ve ever shone by someone else’s side.”

The black-haired girl chuckled bitterly, “I can’t see you that way right now, Anna. But I swear that, given some time, I can be happy for you. So, please, let me have some time from now. Let me be alone just for a little while.”

The blonde girl nodded weakly, took the roses, and quickly dashed away from the patio. Ara looked at the incoming night, finding it too dark for the sun to still colour the far-end of the horizon pink. After some minutes, she walked back inside and went straight ahead to get her long, black coat and scarf out of her locker. She put both the hood on and covered her face with the scarf, even if it was not that cold. Ara hurriedly walked away from the school, and, as soon as she spotted her brother’s car in the parking lot, she ran straight to it. 

She slammed the door shut and held her head in her hands. Immediately, she shed all the tears she did not want Anna to see. Even with her heart reduced to ashes, Ara could never stoop low enough to show the woman she loved more than she had loved anyone that her rejection hurt this much. An invisible hand was crushing her entire chest, ripping out every little ash until only an ice-cold void was left. The cold was no better than the flames. No, in fact, it was a thousand times worse.

Ara cried out, savagely tearing her scarf off her face. She covered her face with her hands to muffle her scream as best as she could. Ara completely ignored her brother’s soft hand over her shoulder. The cold void was sinking her entire being, taking away every bit of air she could gasp for.

“Ara,” he softly said, “what’s wrong?”

She could only shake her head briefly, still feeling that her throat was blocking any sounds besides sobs. She could not speak, seek comfort. She could only cry, cry the love that a single sentence had set ruthlessly ablaze and painfully frozen over. She took a deep breath from her mouth, as if she had just learnt how to breathe again. She coughed, her head being hammered in her temples, but she felt calm enough to think about something else other than the pain that consumed her.

“I…” she managed to say between her sobs, “I was...I just was… a year too late.”

“Huh? What happened, Ara?”, Aren asked once more, leaning closer to her.

Ara took shivering breaths in, still having tears stream down her cheeks, ruining her makeup, “If Mom finds out, she’ll kick me out, Aren. She’s gonna do it...”

“You can tell me about it, then. I swear I won’t tell Mom a thing.”

Aren’s younger sister simply looked away, holding the edges of her hood for comfort, “She wants us back soon,” she choked a sob, “You’d better get the car started, or I’ll have to deal with even more shit! She’ll kick me out...”

The young engineer slowly backed away and seemingly did as his sister asked. The first fifteen minutes were spent in complete silence. Ara had not stopped shedding tears. On a traffic light, she finally broke the silence.

“You know my friend, Anna...” she mumbled, “Well, you never actually met her, but remember you told me she was a good friend because she made me smile, right?”

“Yes,” Aren said, intentionally taking the wrong turn. Ara did not seem to notice because she continued to speak in a quiet voice that barely contained her grief.

“When I mentioned I sang, but my voice was low-pitched, she immediately said that my voice was the way it was because it was meant for people to hear it on a stage. Bam. She saw right through my mind of all those performances I did before, where I was in the spotlight, and I just _felt_ the energy of the crowd within me and that I felt it was my calling.” 

Aren nodded, looking to cross the bridge to Hamel’s downtown. Even then, Ara did not seem to notice they were not going home. His sister looked at the quiet Resiam Island and her chuckle was, to Aren’s ears, poorly hidden sobs.

“We met, and she was like the lighthouse in the storm. We had so much in common, and, most importantly, when I showed her my lowest of lows…she held me. And you know what? She also told me she was glad I cried because it meant I wasn’t bottling my feelings up anymore.”

She shook again under the weight of sobs, screaming as she drowned again, “How was I supposed to not fall completely and stupidly in love with someone who knew me so much she might as well have been my soulmate?!"

Her voice became a whispered whimper, "I just couldn't help it. And as more time passed...I couldn't put a stop to it. I just loved her more...Even now…"

Ara choked on another wail and angrily swiped her tears away, “Mom will make me tell her everything. She’ll hit me until I crack. And when she knows, she’ll just kick me out of the house. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do once that happens.”

“That’s simple,” Aren said, “You’ll live with me. I rented an apartment in Residential District M. It has two rooms, hot water,all the basics, so you’ll be alright. I’ll go back to Mom’s house tomorrow to get as much of your things as she lets me take. I’ll still have to tell her, but you won’t have to face her, and I’ll never tell her where we are.”

Ara finally looked up and saw they were not going home in the slightest. The bright lights of Resiam’s downtown. Her puffy eyes, marked by trails of copper trails of makeup that went down her cheeks, grew wide at the view.

“Aren,” she said, “If...If we do this, Mom’s gonna stop paying my tuition, isn’t she?”

“She’s certainly going to officially make you a drop-out and also make me pay one way or another for supposedly going rogue against her. In a way, we’re both disowned now. But I’ve prepared for it." He took a deep breath, "You know, there’s an adult learning centre nearby, like five blocks away. Luichel is part of the higher ends of the administration, so there’s a place for you once the holiday break is over. As for your prom...there is Chloe’s wedding in June. It’s not the same, but you’ll get to wear a nice dress, dance and celebrate your diploma. On the plus side, nobody is going to be mad if you drink some wine. You wouldn’t have that privilege on a regular prom.”

The black-haired girl managed to smile weakly in the midst of her grief, “You had it all planned...you wanted to take me out of there when I turned seventeen, right?”

“I would have liked it to be a bit earlier. I knew I had to take you out of her claws. Especially after how she left you once she found out about that F you got. That was the straw that broke the camel's back."

Ara looked down, "That day, you tried to get her off me, right? Or was I already seeing things after all those hits?"

"I did, because that's what a family is supposed to do: protect you."

The raven-haired girl sobbed softly, "Aren… shouldn't you at least...take me back so I can go get the things I really want to keep?"

The young engineer would have patted her, but getting themselves safely to their destination was far more important, "No. You're already what mom would describe as hysterical. And your fears about what would happen after she sees you aren't unfounded. Make me a list, and I swear I'll get those things."

Ara's brother frowned, "Mom would…" he clicked his tongue, "Mom would be reminded of the biggest reason for her divorce if she knew. She's been bad enough to you as it is. You don't need to know her at her very worst. Not ever."

Aren turned around a few street corners before parallel parking in front of a newer-looking condo building. Ara looked up at the sky, barely seeing the stars in the ink-black sky above. Her eternal sun had slipped away from her, and thus began the day after dark. 

Aren's apartment was about the same size as Anna's home, or perhaps smaller. While a lot of things littered the way through the halls in her former friend's home, Aren kept his as tidy as their mother would have expected of her children. Ara walked up to the grey sofa and sat down across its length, holding her knees close to her. 

She heard some sound from the kitchen: water poured in some kind of kettle and the short 'clack' of a stove being turned on. Then, music came along, and a man's voice sang softly along the piano.

_"Hey, Jude, don't make it bad. Take a sad song, and make it better."_

Ara hid her face behind her knees, her tears coming back like a soft tide. The scent of coffee and something sweet tickled her nose as Aren's steps got closer. He held a plastic tray where two mismatched mugs and plates laid orderly. He put the tray on the floor and passed one of the mugs to Ara.

She welcomed the heat in her hands. Her brother sat on the floor, in front of the sofa, looking at the glass door that led to the balcony and the night scenery beyond. Ara got up with her cup and sat down next to her brother. She blew a bit on her cup and took a sip, looking at the tray that laid to the other side. There was a dish with two chocolate chip cookies.

Ara softly wiped her tears before resting her head over her brother's shoulder as the old songs he listened to continued to play.

  
  


"Thank you so much, brother."


	5. Epilogue - After Dark, The Stars Still Shine

Ara sat on the balcony, her long, black hair swaying along a summer gale. The sun was hiding in grey clouds, forging a dome of steel. It was twenty past eight. She read the instant messages over her phone, glad to find out that she could still cling onto something that could more or less seal the void Anna had left behind. If she had rarely believed in eternal love before, she did less so now. But it did not really matter. She dreamt that, perhaps, she could trick herself to forget. As long as she kept herself locked away in lies, nothing would hurt anymore. Nothing would shine anymore either, but who said she was meant to see the brightest colours in the sky?

In fact, she believed the ephemeral heartbeat she felt from time to time was a sign she was adapting to her reality. Just mild risque comments, a compliment here, a pet name there, entertaining ideas of one day meeting and never separating. Such things were impossible, but it did not matter as long as it at least gave some vain feeling of being loved. This was what she was supposed to feel in a successful relationship. As long as it shielded her from the void itself, Ara could feel almost happy to say for the first time in her life that she had a boyfriend she had never met.

Any warmth could make her happy. That was why time healed wounds, was it not?

And yet, sometimes, she stared blankly at the same messages she read. Nothing was there. No warmth, no sun, not even daylight. There was only a night sky and a star too far away to ever be beautiful. 

Well, it was better than complete darkness. And maybe that was all she was supposed to expect out of life. The night sky could perhaps be as beautiful as the sun that would never come back. After all, the moon shone in the night sky, too. She would just have to wait for her moon.

Aren knocked on the glass door. Ara turned around and saw him point towards the dining room. Dinner was ready. She nodded and slid both the mosquito net and the glass door to get back inside. She locked her phone and stretched; her mouth salivated at the scent of Aren’s special potage.

“Mhhm. A special potage is what I need after my shift~” she mused, walking to the table, sitting down in front of Aren while she left her cellphone aside. She took a spoonful of it, giving her brother a thumbs-up.

Aren smiled softly at her, “How is that other story of yours going, by the way? Did you find a name similar to Dahlia?”

Ara froze for a moment, her cheerfulness slowly swept away by the dimmed joy she felt when she was true to herself, “Yeah.”

“That’s great. How’s the story going to go?”

His sister had still a heartbroken smile. She combed back her hair behind her ears, “Well, all great warriors, even Lyra, have to come back home. She's wounded, tired, and just wants someone to cradle her as peace comes back to the entire realm.”

Ara ate half of her soup in silence before continuing, “So, the story begins with Lyra waking up in a military hospital, taken care of by an older, dark elf. He’s an alchemist and a botanist. He will not only heal her body, but also make her overcome all she has been through with the utmost care. He has the summer sun in his eyes, Lyra has a cold winter in hers, so when they see each other, they soon find out they’re meant to be.”

She finished her soup and took a piece of sliced cheese her brother had put on the table, “And his name is gonna be Darhan. It's not quite close to Dahlia, but the other idea was Darius, which is even further away."

Aren nodded, taking a piece of cheese himself, “I see. Sounds like it’s going to be a nice romance story.”

“Yeah. It’s going to be everything I’ve dreamt of. Darhan’s really going to be Lyra’s eternal sun."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to my proof-reader, and to all of you who have read until the end. Don't hesitate to share your thoughts, whatever they may be.


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